The Postcolonial Museum

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 The Postcolonial Museum
The Arts of Memory and the Pressures of History

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Edited by
Iain Chambers, Alessandra De Angelis,
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Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona
and Michaela Quadraro
Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, Italy
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 © Iain Chambers, Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona and
Michaela Quadraro 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Iain Chambers, Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona and

Michaela Quadraro have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company

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Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street
Union Road Suite 3-1
Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818

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Surrey, GU9 7PT USA
England

www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

The postcolonial museum : the arts of memory and the pressures of history / by
Iain Chambers, Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona,
Michaela Quadraro.
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pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-1567-7 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-1568-4 (ebook) --
ISBN 978-1-4724-1569-1 (epub) 1. Museums--Social aspects. 2. Postcolonialism--
Social aspects. 3. Collective memory--Social aspects. 4. Museums and community.
I. Chambers, Iain, editor of compilation.
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AM7.P59 2014
069--dc23
2013033639

ISBN 9781472415677 (hbk)

ISBN 9781472415684 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 9781472415691 (ebk – ePUB)

Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited,

at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD

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 1 1
2 2
3 Contents 3
4 4
5 5
6 6
7 7
8 List of Figures   ix 8
9 List of Contributors   xi 9
10 Acknowledgements   xix 10
11 11
12 Introduction: Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and 12
13 Postcoloniality 1 13

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14 Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona 14
15 and Michaela Quadraro 15
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1 A Museum Without Objects  
Françoise Vergès
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Part I: Global Migrations, Transcultural Heritage

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23 2 Decolonising National Museums of Ethnography in Europe: 23
24 Exposing and Reshaping Colonial Heritage (2000–2012)   39 24
25 Felicity Bodenstein and Camilla Pagani 25
26 26
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27 3 Colonial Spaces, Postcolonial Narratives: The Exhibitionary 27

28 Landscape of Fort Cochin in India   51 28
29 Neelima Jeychandran 29
30 30
31 4 Ethnographic Museums: From Colonial Exposition to Intercultural 31
Dialogue   63
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32 32
33 Fabienne Boursiquot 33
34 34
35 35
36 Part II: Artistic Incursions in Space and Time 36
37 37
38 5 ‘There is Not Yet a World’   75 38
39 Ebadur Rahman 39
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 vi The Postcolonial Museum

1 6 The Artist as Interlocutor and the 1

2 Labour of Memory   89 2
3 Mihaela Brebenel, Christopher Collier and Joanna Figiel 3
4 4
5 7 Performance in the Museum Space 5
6 (for a Wandering Society)   99 6
7 Margherita Parati 7
8 8
9 9
10 Part III: Disorienting the Museum 10
11 11
12 8 Museo Diffuso: Performing Memory in Public Spaces   111 12
13 Viviana Gravano 13

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15 9 Mining the Museum in an Age of Migration   125 15
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Anne Ring Petersen

10 Blurring History: The Central

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European Museum and the Schizophrenia
of Capital  
Ivan Jurica
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23 11 The Limits to Institutional 23
24 Change: Organisational Roles and Roots   147 24
25 Peggy Levitt 25
26 26
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27 27
28 Part IV: Representation and Beyond 28
29 29
30 12 The Incurable Image: Curation and Repetition on a 30
31 Tri-continental Scene   161 31
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32 Tarek Elhaik 32
33 33
34 13 The Postcolonial ‘Exhibitionary Complex’: The Role of the 34
35 International Expo in Migrating and Multicultural Societies   175 35
36 Stefania Zuliani 36
37 37
38 14 Orientalism and the Politics of Contemporary Art Exhibitions   185 38
39 Alessandra Marino 39
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42 42
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 Contents vii

1 15 What Museum for Africa?   195 1

2 Itala Vivan 2
3 3
4 4
5 Part V: Future Memories, Alternative Archives 5
6 6
7 16 Egyptian Chemistry: From Postcolonial to Post-humanist Matters  
209 7
8 Ursula Biemann 8
9 9
10 17 ‘The Lived Moment’: New Aesthetics for Migrant Recollection   219 10
11 Peter Leese 11
12 12
13 18 Coding/Decoding the Archive   229 13

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14 David Gauthier and Erin La Cour 14
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16 Afterword: After the Museum   241 16
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Iain Chambers

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 1 1
2 2
3 List of Figures 3
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6 6
7 7
8 2.1 Whose Objects? Photograph by Camilla Pagani, June 2012. 40 8
9 2.2 ‘L’homme léopard’ at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, 9
10 Tervuren. Photograph by Felicity Bodenstein, January 2012. 44 10
11 2.3 Detail of permanent installation, National Museum of World 11
12 Culture, Gothenburg. Photograph by Camilla Pagani, June 2012. 47 12
13 3.1 A signpost at the public space now called Vasco da Gama Square 13

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14 that refers to Fort Cochin as the ‘Land of Memories’. Photograph 14
15 by Neelima Jeychandran, May 2012. 52 15
3.2 The Museum Company, an antique store-cum-curio shop
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Neelima Jeychandran, May 2012.
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advertising itself as a museum at Fort Cochin. Photograph by

3.3 David Hall, the seventeenth-century residence of the Dutch

governor, which currently serves as a contemporary art gallery and
also one of the venues of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Photograph
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22 by Neelima Jeychandran, December 2012. 56 22
23 7.1 Different layouts in the Live Tank for the project Across the Board. 23
24 Sketches by Margherita Parati, 2012. 104 24
25 7.2 Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, ‘Cavernous Agora of the Palais de Tokyo’, 25
26 2012. Exhibition view from La Triennale 2012, Intense Proximité, 26
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27 http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/7759895088/in/photostream/ 27
28 (accessed 6 November 2013). Photograph reproduced courtesy of 28
29 Jean-Pierre Dalbéra. 105 29
30 8.1 ‘A parked bike’. Photograph by Viviana Gravano, 2012. 120 30
31 9.1 Fred Wilson, ‘Metalwork 1793–1880’, from Mining the Museum: 31
An Installation by Fred Wilson, The Contemporary Museum and
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32 32
33 Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, 1992–93. Silver vessels in 33
34 Baltimore Repoussé style, 1830–80; slave shackles, c. 1793–1872, 34
35 made in Baltimore. Makers unknown. Photograph © Fred Wilson, 35
36 reproduced courtesy of the artist and the Pace Gallery. 126 36
37 9.2 Yinka Shonibare, ‘The Confession’, installation from Garden of 37
38 Love, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, 2007. Two mannequins, Dutch 38
39 wax printed cotton textile, shoes, coir mattins, plinth, artificial silk 39
40 flowers, 158 × 178 × 170 cm. Photograph by Patrick Gries. Image 40
41 courtesy of the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New York and Stephen 41
42 Friedman Gallery, London. 127 42
43 9.3 Fred Wilson, ‘Modes of Transport 1770–1910’, from Mining the 43
44 Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson, The Contemporary 44

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 x The Postcolonial Museum

1 Museum and Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, 1992–93. 1

2 Baby carriage c. 1908, hood twentieth century. Makers unknown. 2
3 Photograph © Fred Wilson, reproduced courtesy of the artist and 3
4 the Pace Gallery. 133 4
5 9.4 Yinka Shonibare, ‘The Crowning’ from Garden of Love, Musée 5
6 du quai Branly, Paris, 2007. Two mannequins, Dutch wax printed 6
7 cotton textile, shoes, coir mattins, artificial silk flowers, 160 × 7
8 280 × 210 cm. Photograph by Patrick Gries. Image reproduced 8
9 courtesy of the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New York, and 9
10 Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. 134 10
11 12.1 Carlos Castro, That Which Does Not Suffer Does Not Live, Bogota, 11
12 2010. Reproduced courtesy of the artist. 171 12
13 15.1 International Slavery Museum, Liverpool. Ibo village with young 13

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14 man (reconstruction). Photograph by Itala Vivan, 2007. 199 14
15 15.2 Zanzibar Slavery Memorial (detail). Photograph by 15
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Itala Vivan, 2010.

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15.3 Liliesleaf Farm and Museum, South Africa. Curiosity cabinet with
memorabilia and documents. Photograph by Itala Vivan, 2012.
15.4 The House of Wonders, Zanzibar. A torn and dusty kanga, symbol
of neglect and decay. Photograph by Itala Vivan, 2012.
16.1 Video still from Ursula Biemann, Egyptian Chemistry, 2012.
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22 Earth sampling at Toshka, a giant land reclamation project on the 22
23 Upper Nile. 214 23
24 16.2 Video still from Ursula Biemann, Egyptian Chemistry, 2012. 24
25 Water sampling in the Nile Delta. 216 25
26 16.3 Video still from Ursula Biemann, Egyptian Chemistry, 2012. Water 26
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27 chemistry laboratory in art installation, Contemporary Art Forum, 27

28 Alexandria.217 28
29 18.1 Alex M. Lee, ‘I dropped my book and now I can’t read my book’, 29
30 2012. Black and white photograph of a damaged Kindle e-reader. 30
31 Reproduced courtesy of the artist 235 31
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 1 1
2 2
3 List of Contributors 3
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8 Ursula Biemann (Institute for Theory of Art and Design, Zurich) is an artist, writer 8
9 and video essayist based in Zurich. Her practice is strongly research-oriented and 9
10 involves fieldwork and video documentation in remote locations. She investigates 10
11 global relations under the impact of the accelerated mobility of people, resources 11
12 and information. Ursula is a senior researcher at the Zurich University for the Arts 12
13 and publisher of several books, including The Maghreb Connection (Actar, 2006). 13

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14 She was appointed Doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University 14
15 of Umea in 2008, and received the 2009 Prix Meret Oppenheim, the national art 15
award of Switzerland.
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Felicity Bodenstein (Université Paris-Est-Créteil) is a doctoral candidate at the
University Paris-Sorbonne working on the history of the Cabinet des médailles et
antiques at the National library in Paris. In 2009–10 she was a fellow at the Getty
Research Institute in Los Angeles with a project entitled Displaying Classical
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22 Antiquity in Paris (1800–1930). Since 2010, she has been working as a research 22
23 assistant on the European National Museums Project at the University of Paris 23
24 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, for which she co-edited Great Narratives of the Past: 24
25 Traditions and Revisions in National Museums and wrote National Museums 25
26 and the Negotiation of Difficult Pasts (both published by Linköpings University 26
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27 Electronic Press, 2012). 27

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29 Fabienne Boursiquot (Université Laval, Quebec) is a graduate student in 29
30 Anthropology at Université Laval, Québec, Canada. Specialising in political 30
31 anthropology of Europe, she works on the cultural productions (monuments, 31
museums) that take ‘otherness’ as an object. Her research project explores the
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33 ethnographic museums’ reconfiguration in France, and how new museums (quai 33
34 Branly, Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, MuCEM) mobilise the notion 34
35 of ‘dialogue’. Fabienne holds two master’s degrees (Anthropology, Translation) 35
36 and is associated with the Centre interuniversitaire d’études sur les lettres, les arts 36
37 et les traditions. She has won the Joseph-Armand-Bombardier Award from the 37
38 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 38
39 39
40 Mihaela Brebenel (Goldsmiths College, London) is a PhD candidate from 40
41 Goldsmiths, University of London, working on the politics and aesthetics of 41
42 moving image art. Her research interests stem from understanding the different 42
43 modes of spectatorship enacted by screen-based media and processes of 43
44 production–reception of moving images, with the aid of affective cartographies 44

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 xii The Postcolonial Museum

1 and eventual formulations, which lead to the creation of subjectivities – perhaps 1

2 invested with drives for political action. Her practice reflects on cultural identity, 2
3 the notion of dérive, critical psychogeographical methods, performative lectures 3
4 and actions/interventions exploring configurations of space, memory, cultural 4
5 exchange economies and the possibilities of collective work. 5
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7 Christopher Collier (University of Essex) is a PhD candidate at the University 7
8 of Essex’s School of Philosophy and Art History. He is working on a critical 8
9 reappraisal of the artistic and cultural phenomenon of ‘psychogeography’ beyond 9
10 its emergence among an array of mid-twentieth-century avant-garde practices. 10
11 Focusing particularly on recent and contemporary iterations, this entails examining 11
12 the ontological and metaphysical framing of this loose tradition, along with the 12
13 relation of psychogeography to a mnemotechnical understanding of the built 13

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14 environment, activist practices and neo-liberal modes of governmentality. He is 14
15 interested in modern and contemporary art, activism, memory and space. 15
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Tarek Elhaik (San Francisco State University) is an anthropologist, film curator and
Assistant Professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University.
His interest in cinema and experimental media is informed by both archival
research on Mexican and Latin American avant-garde film and by an ethnography
of curatorial laboratories in Mexico City. He has curated several experimental film
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22 programmes from Latin America and the Arab World at the Pacific Film Archive, 22
23 Ruhr Triennale, San Francisco Cinematheque, Cinemathèque de Tanger, De Young 23
24 Museum, Rice University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He is currently 24
25 working on a manuscript titled ‘The Incurable Image: Repetition and Curation on 25
26 a Tri-Continental Scene’. 26
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28 Joanna Figiel (City University, London) is a doctoral candidate at the Centre 28
29 for Culture Policy Management at City University, and Research Associate in the 29
30 Hybrid Publishing Lab at the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana Universität. 30
31 Her research focuses on labour issues, precarity and policy within the creative 31
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32 and cultural sectors. She completed her MA at the Centre for Cultural Studies, 32
33 Goldsmiths College. 33
34 34
35 David Gauthier (Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design) is Associate 35
36 Professor at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. His research and 36
37 teaching focus on the cultural, material and experimental nature of technologies 37
38 as a means to speculate and develop future scenarios involving humans and 38
39 machines. David has a graduate degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the 39
40 Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has worked as a researcher in various 40
41 institutions, notably the MIT Media Laboratory, the Banff New Media Institute 41
42 and the Hexagram Institute for Research/Creation in Media Arts and Technologies. 42
43 He has artistic and scientific research expertise in domains ranging from actuated 43
44 textiles to viral communications. 44

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 List of Contributors xiii

1 Viviana Gravano (Brera Academy of Fine Arts) is a Rome-based Contemporary 1

2 Art Curator and Professor of Art History at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts 2
3 (Milan) and at the European Institute of Design in Rome, where she has also 3
4 directed art events as Museum Curator. She is on the editorial board and direction 4
5 of several art journals, has curated events in the Nova Gallery and in LopLop 5
6 Gallery in Rome, and is the author of the radio programme The Magic Eyes, 6
7 broadcast by RAI Radio3. She has published widely in exhibition catalogues 7
8 and journals on photography and visual art, and is the author of Paesaggi attivi: 8
9 l’arte contemporanea e il paesaggio metropolitano (Costa & Nolan, 2008). 9
10 10
11 Neelima Jeychandran (University of California, Los Angeles) is a visual 11
12 anthropologist who researches the visual arts and performances of South Asia 12
13 and West Africa. She is also interested in examining how museums functions 13

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14 as ‘loci of memory’, specifically studying how these places become activated 14
15 as sites for personal, public and national remembrances. She is in the process 15
16 of completing her PhD in Culture and Performance from the University of 16
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Fall 2009. op
California, Los Angeles, where she has been working as a research assistant and
teaching assistant in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance since

Ivan Jurica (mumok, Vienna) is a cultural worker and art educator. In 2009 he
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22 graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Currently he is a doctoral 22
23 candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, as 23
24 well as an art educator at mumok (Museum of Modern Art), Vienna. He works 24
25 at the intersection between theory, art and politics, and is based in Vienna and 25
26 Bratislava. 26
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28 Erin La Cour (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) is a PhD candidate 28

29 at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, and defended her dissertation, 29
30 ‘The “Graphic Novel”: Discourses on the Archive’, in April 2013. In addition, 30
31 she is a docent in the English department at the University of Amsterdam, editor 31
32 of the Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art, and editor of the Nordic Network 32
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33 for Comics Research’s forthcoming anthology, under review by the University 33

34 Press of Mississippi. Currently, she is working as project adviser for Black or 34
35 White, an exhibition on sequential art at the Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands. 35
36 36
37 Peter Leese (University of Copenhagen) is Associate Professor of British History 37
38 at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of 38
39 Copenhagen. His publications include Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the 39
40 British Soldiers of the First World War, The British Migrant Experience 1700– 40
41 2000: An Anthology (both published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) and Britain 41
42 since 1945: Aspects of Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). His current research 42
43 project is on the history of migration life stories from the eighteenth century to 43
44 the present day. 44

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 xiv The Postcolonial Museum

1 Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College) is Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College 1

2 and Co-director of the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard University. 2
3 She was Visiting International Fellow at the Vrije University in Amsterdam 3
4 (2010–12) and Willie Brandt Guest Professor at the University of Malmö (2009). 4
5 Her books include Religion on the Edge (Oxford University Press, 2012), The 5
6 Transnational Studies Reader (Routledge, 2007), The Changing Face of Home: 6
7 The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation (Russell Sage, 2002) and The 7
8 Transnational Villagers (University of California Press, 2001). She has edited 8
9 special volumes of several journals. A film based on her work, Art Across Borders, 9
10 was released in 2009. 10
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12 Alessandra Marino (The Open University) is a Research Associate in the project 12
13 Oecumene: Citizenship after Orientalism at the Open University. She received 13

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14 her PhD in Postcolonial and Cultural Studies from the University of Naples 14
15 ‘L’Orientale’. Her research fields range from postcolonial literature and theory 15
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to visual studies. She has published articles on Anita Desai, Nalini Malani,
contemporary Indian cinema and video-art, and on Shakespearean appropriations
in a postcolonial perspective, and co-edited with L. Curti the book Shakespeare in

Camilla Pagani (Université Paris-Est-Créteil) holds a master’s degree in Political

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22 Science from Sciences Po Paris, and is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at 22
23 the Department of Philosophy at Université Paris-Est-Créteil and Università degli 23
24 studi di Milano. Her thesis is on current museums of ethnography and identities, 24
25 focusing especially on multiculturalism, globalisation and cultural minorities in 25
26 Europe and in the United States. She has published Genealogia del primitivo: il 26
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27 musée du quai Branly, Lévi-Strauss e la scrittura etnografica (Negreto, 2009), 27

28 and has presented papers at several international symposiums. She collaborates 28
29 with UNESCO on a variety of projects and is an independent researcher for the 29
30 EU-funded MeLa project. 30
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32 Margherita Parati (Milan Polytechnic) studied Architecture at the Politecnico 32

33 di Milano and Technishe Universiteit, Eindhoven, her thesis proposing the 33
34 conversion of a Second World War U-boat bunker at Saint-Nazaire, France into 34
35 an open food market and public space. Since 2008 she has been working for art 35
36 galleries and architectural studios specialising in interior design, exhibition design 36
37 as well as artwork production and installations. She is a PhD candidate in Interior 37
38 Architecture and Exhibition Design at the Politecnico di Milano, where she is also 38
39 participating in the MeLa project. 39
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41 Anne Ring Petersen (University of Copenhagen) is an art historian and Associate 41
42 Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of 42
43 Copenhagen, Denmark. She is the co-ordinator of the interdisciplinary research 43
44 44

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 List of Contributors xv

1 Network for Migration and Culture (funded by the Danish Council for Independent 1
2 Research, 2011–14). She has published widely on modern and contemporary art in 2
3 exhibition catalogues, anthologies and journals such as Third Text, RIHA Journal 3
4 and Column. Her recent publications include the monograph Installationskunsten 4
5 mellem billede og scene (‘Installation Art between Image and Stage’) (Museum 5
6 Tusculanum Press, 2009) and the anthology Contemporary Painting in Context 6
7 (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010). 7
8 8
9 Ebadur Rahman (independent curator, writer and filmmaker, Dhaka) is a 9
10 Paris-based theoretician/curator who specialises in organising fluid, open-ended 10
11 happenings and events. He studied at University of Arts, London, at New School, 11
12 Columbia University, at Whitney Museum, and trained in Engaged Buddhism at 12
13 Naropa University, Colorado. His essays and reviews have been published in 13

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14 numerous magazines, journals and catalogues. He was the executive editor of 14
15 Depart, the only English-language art magazine from Bangladesh, and Artistic 15
16 Director and Chief Curator of Samdani – the art initiative. He has written the 16
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scripts for two full-length feature films, Meherjaan (2011) and Guerrilla (2011),
the latter being awarded the Best Asian Film in the 2011 Kolkata International

Françoise Vergès (Goldsmiths College, London; President of the Comité pour

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22 la Mémoire et l’Histoire de l’Esclavage, France) has written on vernacular 22
23 practices of memories, slavery and the economy of predation, the ambiguities 23
24 of French abolitionism, colonial and postcolonial psychiatry, Frantz Fanon, 24
25 Aimé Césaire, French postcoloniality, postcolonial museography, the routes of 25
26 migration, and processes of creolisation in the Indian Ocean. She has worked 26
27 with filmmakers and artists Isaac Julien, Yinka Shonibareand Arnaud Ngatcha. 27
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28 She was a project adviser for Documenta 11 in 2002, and contributed to the 28
29 2012 Paris Triennial. Her most recent publications are L’Homme prédateur: ce 29
30 que nous enseigne l’esclavage sur notre temps (Albin Michel, 2011) and ‘Lives 30
31 That Matter’, in O. Enwezor et al. (eds), Intense Proximité, la Triennale (Palais 31
32 de Tokyo, 2012). 32
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33 33
34 Itala Vivan (University of Milan) is the former Professor of Cultural and 34
35 Postcolonial Studies at the School of Political Science, University of Milan. 35
36 She has written in the field of postcolonial studies, analysing the relationships 36
37 between literature, history and society in sub-Saharan Africa, and the emergence 37
38 of new, creolised literary expressions in the West and elsewhere. Her recent 38
39 books include Corpi liberati in cerca di storia, di storie: il nuovo Sudafrica 39
40 dieci anni dopo l’apartheid (Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2005) and, with R. Pedretti, 40
41 Dalla Lambretta allo skateboard: teorie e storia delle sottoculture giovanili 41
42 britanniche (Unicopli, 2009). More recently, she has researched and published 42
43 on the role of cultural museums in contemporary society. 43
44 44

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 xvi The Postcolonial Museum

1 Stefania Zuliani (University of Salerno) is Associate Professor at the University 1

2 of Salerno, where she teaches Theory and History of the Contemporary Museum 2
3 and Theory of Art Criticism. She focuses her research on the different aspects 3
4 and problems related to role of the museum in the global art system. Her books 4
5 Effetto museo: arte critica educazione (Mondadori Bruno, 2009) and Esposizioni: 5
6 emergenze della critica d’arte contemporanea (Mondadori Bruno, 2012) illustrate 6
7 her interests in the connection between the recent decades of artistic and critic 7
8 production, periodic exhibitions and museums. She is an art critic and visual art 8
9 curator for the Filiberto Menna Foundation. 9
10 10
11 Editors 11
12 12
13 Iain Chambers teaches Cultural, Postcolonial and Mediterranean studies at 13

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14 the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ and is currently the local co-ordinator 14
15 of the MeLa project. He has published widely on urban culture and music, 15
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postcolonial perspectives and Mediterranean studies. His most recent works
include Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity
(Duke University Press, 2008) and Mediterraneo blues: musiche, malinconia
postcoloniale, pensieri marittimi (Bollati Boringhieri, 2012).

Alessandra De Angelis holds a PhD in Cultural and Postcolonial Studies of the

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22 Anglophone World at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ (with a dissertation 22
23 on the aporias of memory, of writing and visual art in post-apartheid South Africa), 23
24 has taught a seminar on postcolonial English literature’ from 2007 to 2010 as a 24
25 contract professor, and English language as a tutor at the Second University of 25
26 Naples in 2010. She is a researcher for the MeLa project. Her latest publications 26
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27 include essays on memorial and postcolonial museums, strategies of resistance 27

28 in South African literature and visual arts, and migrant female writers from 28
29 anglophone Africa. 29
30 30
31 Celeste Ianniciello holds a PhD in Cultural and Postcolonial Studies of the 31
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32 Anglophone World from the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’. Her research 32

33 analyses the visual (auto)biography of female artists from Mediterranean countries 33
34 (Mona Hatoum, Zineb Sedira, Lara Baladi and Emily Jacir) as a contrapuntal 34
35 example set against the epistemology of geographical, cultural and sexual 35
36 borders. She is interested in public art practices coming from experiences of 36
37 migrations as ‘living archives’ of postcoloniality. She has participated in national 37
38 and international conferences and has produced articles on literature, cinema and 38
39 above all visual arts. She is a researcher for the MeLa project. 39
40 40
41 Mariangela Orabona holds a PhD in ‘Cultural and Postcolonial Studies of the 41
42 Anglophone World’ from the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’. Her doctoral 42
43 thesis, in which she examines the works of the artists Renée Green, Lorna 43
44 Simpson and Kara Walker in terms of the absence and erasure of the female 44

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 List of Contributors xvii

1 African-American body, represents a synthesis of her studies in the visual arts. 1

2 Her main research interests concern visual aesthetics, theories of difference, post- 2
3 representational theory and new media arts practices. Her recent publications 3
4 include ‘Sensing Race and Gender in Contemporary Postcolonial Art’, in S. Pinder 4
5 (ed.), American Multicultural Studies: Diversity of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and 5
6 Sexuality (Sage, 2013). She is a researcher for the MeLa project. 6
7 7
8 Michaela Quadraro holds a PhD in Cultural and Postcolonial Studies of 8
9 the Anglophone World’ from the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’. She is a 9
10 researcher and member of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies at ‘L’Orientale’. 10
11 Her research interests focus on contemporary art and cinema through the critical 11
12 approach of postcolonial theory and visual culture. Her publications include 12
13 ‘Digital Aesthetics and Affective Politics’, in A. Karatzogianni and A. Kuntsman 13

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14 (eds), Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 14
15 ‘Museum Practices of Resistance’, in B. Ferrara (ed.), Cultural Memory, 15
16 Migrating Modernities and Museum Practices (Politecnico di Milano DPA, 16
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Trinh T. Minh-ha (Aracne, 2012).
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2012) and L’arte digitale postcoloniale: uno studio sull’opera di Isaac Julien e 17
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 1 1
2 2
3 Acknowledgements 3
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6 6
7 7
8 The essays published in this volume emerge from the international conference 8
9 The Postcolonial Museum: The Pressures of Memory, the Bodies of History held 9
10 at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ on 7–8 February 2013, organised by the 10
11 curators of this volume, Iain Chambers, Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, 11
12 Mariangela Orabona, Michaela Quadraro and Lidia Curti. The immediate context 12
13 of the conference was the MeLa (European Museums and Libraries in/of an Age 13

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14 of Migrations) project, funded by the European Commission under the Seventh 14
15 Framework Programme. MeLa involves nine European partners – universities, 15
museums, research institutes and a company – which are leading six research fields
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of the conference.
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with a collaborative approach. This book presents a selection of the proceedings

The aim is to propose a critical re-evaluation of the museum in the light of

those transcultural and global migratory movements that question the historical
and traditional frames of Occidental thought, complicating its assumption through
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22 the registration of heterogeneous planetary practices. Achille Mbembe’s call for a 22
23 radical humanism and a responsible attitude – capable of accounting for not only 23
24 history and heritage, but especially for the present and the future of our planet 24
25 suspended in a space of multiple belongings and visions – has deeply influenced 25
26 this phase of our research, and is reflected in the contents of this volume. Within 26
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27 the MeLa project, which has promoted a search for new strategies and critical 27
28 approaches in the fields of museum and heritage studies – and which we hope will 28
29 renew and extend understandings of European citizenship – such a perspective 29
30 leads to an inevitable re-evaluation of the concept of ‘migration’ in a so-called 30
31 globalised and multicultural world. 31
Our thanks go to Lidia Curti for all her editorial, analytical and cultural input,
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32 32
33 Mark Weir for his linguistic fine-tuning, Dario Giugliano for critical advice, 33
34 Beatrice Ferrara and Giulia Grechi for keeping the machinery running, and to Lida 34
35 Viganoni, Rector of ‘L’Orientale’, for graciously providing us with the splendid 35
36 space in which to discuss and debate all of these issues. 36
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 1 1
2 Introduction: Disruptive Encounters – 2
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4 Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 3
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5 5
6 Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona 6
7 and Michaela Quadraro 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 Postcolonial art is intimately linked to globalisation – that is, to a critical reflection 12
13 on the planetary conditions of artistic production, circulation and reception. This 13

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14 implies focusing on the interweaving of the geographical, cultural, historical and 14
15 economic contexts in which art takes place. The relationship between globalisation 15
and art, as Okwi Enwezor observes, conceived and institutionalised by the European
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history of modern art in terms of separation or simply negation, here acquires
fundamental importance (Enwezor 2003). It represents both the premise through
which the relationship between art and the postcolonial can be conceptualised, and
the matrix that helps to convey the cultural and political value of this relationship,
together with its significance as a disruptive encounter. Far from being lost in
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22 the sterile and abstract, yet provincial, mirror of self-referentiality masked as 22
23 universalism – with the implicit claim of the autonomy and independence of art 23
24 from other cultural forms and activities – postcolonial art is deeply and consciously 24
25 embedded in historicity, globalisation and social discourse. On one hand, it 25
26 reminds us of how power is organic to the constitution of the diverse relations 26
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27 and asymmetries that shape our postcolonial world, and hence of how ‘bringing 27
28 contemporary art into the geopolitical framework that defines global relations 28
29 offers a perspicacious view of the postcolonial constellation’ (Enwezor 2003, 29
30 58). On the other hand, postcolonial art also shows how aesthetics today presents 30
31 itself as an incisive critical instance. Postcolonial art proposes new paradigms of 31
both signification and subjectivation, offering alternative interpretative tools that
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32 32
33 promote a reconfiguration of a planetary reality. 33
34 Analysing the link between modernity and this global reality, we can say 34
35 that globalisation can be understood as the planetary ‘expansion of trade and 35
36 its grip on the totality of natural resources, of human production, in a word of 36
37 living in its entirety’ (Mbembe 2003). It was inaugurated by the Occident through 37
38 a violent process of expropriation, appropriation and an exasperated defence of 38
39 property, spread globally through capitalism and its imperialist extension. This 39
40 is a political economy that is deeply rooted in, and sustained by, the humanist, 40
41 rationalist, colonialist and nationalist culture of the West. The central phenomenon 41
42 of modernity, born in a historical exercise of power, was fed by the religion of 42
43 ‘progress’ and the racist ideology of ‘white supremacy’ imposing itself for 43
44 centuries as a universal ontological category through the institutions of laws, 44

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 2 The Postcolonial Museum

1 governance and the brutal instrumentalisation of lives and bodies (Spivak 1999). 1
2 As Homi Bhabha insists, it is impossible to separate this past from the present. 2
3 They are not disconnected: the former is not a mere predecessor of the latter. On 3
4 the contrary, the past presents itself as a contingent, interstitial and ‘intermediate’ 4
5 space that intervenes in the present, bringing newness with it. Remembering 5
6 cannot be a quiet and introspective recollection: ‘It is a painful re-membering, 6
7 a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the 7
8 present’ (Bhabha 1986, xxiii). Memory here becomes a search for the traces left 8
9 behind by old and new imperialist strategies. 9
10 This is particularly evident if we consider the experience of colonialism not as 10
11 a concluded chapter in global history, but as an intrinsic and indelible part of the 11
12 contemporary world. Although the great empires of the past have officially ended, 12
13 Europe can be observed through a postcolonial lens that unveils tensions and 13

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14 uneasy answers. Migratory movements and transcultural differences continually 14
15 interrogate issues such as cultural heritage and national identity. People who 15
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have come from one-time colonies in search of a better life perform a perpetual 16
and concrete re-membering of the deep interconnection between the former 17
metropolitan centres of power and its disseminated peripheries.
The challenge of the postcolonial approach to contemporary society is to 19
question the historiographical narrative as told from within the parameters of a 20
univocal point of view. In this sense, Stuart Hall, in his 1996 essay ‘When Was 21
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22 “the Post-colonial?” Thinking at the Limit’, points out that postcolonial time is still 22
23 a time of ‘difference’. This condition is configured as a postcolonial constellation, 23
24 and gives voice to multiple and heterogenous contexts that differ from each 24
25 other. Nevertheless, the term ‘postcolonial’ has been particularly convincing in 25
26 demonstrating that there are no neat distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘here’ 26
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27 and ‘there’. Colonisation is read as ‘part of an essentially transnational and 27

28 transcultural global process’ that produces de-centred and diasporic re-elaborations 28
29 of the grand narratives (Hall 1996, 247). The global intertwines with the local, and 29
30 marks the proliferation of multiple connections and migratory forms and forces. 30
31 From dislocated and disseminated spatialities, alternative narrations propose 31
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32 creative imaginaries, ideas and artworks that can belong to this or that place. 32
33 Referring to Achille Mbembe’s intuitions, our world could best be understood 33
34 in terms of ‘the interlacing of histories and the concatenation of distinct worlds’ 34
35 (Mbembe 2011, 86). Colonial experience is thus described as a complex and 35
36 open-ended process that plays a crucial role for the circulation of goods, collective 36
37 imaginations and human beings. This is to register the formation of a transnational 37
38 and transcultural world characterised by contact zones, passages and interstices. 38
39 It is in this re-consideration of universal history that the postcolonial challenge 39
40 takes place. However, rather than referring to what comes after, the prefix ‘post’ 40
41 implies a critical analysis that deconstructs Western hegemony and reveals 41
42 the consequences that are at the very heart of modernity. As Edward W. Said 42
43 understood, the Western archive has to be analysed ‘contrapuntally’, taking into 43
44 account simultaneously both the dominant historiography and the other histories 44

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 Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 3

1 that are negated and repressed (Said 1994). Cultural forms need to be taken out of 1
2 traditional enclosures and considered in a global process. This is to acknowledge 2
3 an ever-changing world, crossed by ‘overlapping territories’ with less rigid 3
4 barriers and ‘intertwined histories’ of productive relations. This implies a critical 4
5 and radical distance from what Mbembe has defined as Western necropolitics – 5
6 that is, the exercise of appropriation through dis-humanisation, based on a force 6
7 ‘which takes life for death and death for life’, and is seemingly incapable of 7
8 transformation. 8
9 Postcolonial art, which emerges from experiences of migration and 9
10 hybridisation, displays how this deadly imposition of the ‘proper’ and the ‘Same’ 10
11 (to put it in feminist terms) is necessarily confronted with its limits and failures. 11
12 Aesthetics opens up the unexpected possibility for a different encounter with and 12
13 conception of the world. Opposed to necropolitics, the experience of art itself is 13

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14 inscribed in an experience of transformation. Significantly, postcolonial art often 14
15 manifests itself in forms of desiring and untameable forces, in expressions of 15
16 interconnections, border-crossing, becoming. Art erupts into history and interrupts 16
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the totalising and exclusionary – in a word, colonial – understanding of the world,
transposing us into the living archive of postcoloniality.
Therefore, if the history of modern art, like the history of modernity, is rooted
in and ordered by imperial discourse, its narrative, which is historically linear,
culturally homogeneous, geographically centralising and politically universal,
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22 is mined and exploded by the pressures of postcolonial narratives, discourses 22
23 and expressions. What is at stake here is not a pacific integration of the missing 23
24 chapters of the forgotten, excluded and subaltern voices into inherited accounts, 24
25 but rather a deconstruction and rewriting of those very histories through the 25
26 irrepressible presence of these other narrations. This helps us to disengage the 26
27 relationship between contemporary art, cultural difference and global reality 27
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28 from the exclusive politics of museology. It also disseminates a dissonance with 28

29 what Kobena Mercer defines as ‘the politics of expedience’, which often seems 29
30 to dominate the ‘multicultural’ and racial-friendly approach of international art 30
31 exhibitions (Mercer 2002). Avoiding the risk of reducing art to an expedience 31
32 for inclusive and moribund accounts of the transcultural present, postcolonial 32
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33 aesthetics invites us to consider art as the possibility through which our 33

34 connection with otherness, with present and past, belonging and memory – even 34
35 with science and nature – is problematised and activated, in unexpected and 35
36 unpredictable ways. 36
37 For example, at Documenta 13, the Palestinian artist Emily Jacir created a kind 37
38 of personal museum from some Palestinian literary remains, where history, memory 38
39 and belonging are intimately interconnected and interrogated. In her photographic 39
40 installation ex libris (2012), the artist showed images drawn from more than 30,000 40
41 books coming from Palestinian homes, institutions and libraries looted by Israel in 41
42 1948, and then kept and catalogued as AP (‘Abandoned Property’) in the Jewish 42
43 National Library, West Jerusalem. Jacir took pictures with her cell phone over the 43
44 course of many visits. She showed the internal pages of those books, where the 44

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 4 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Arabic is both in handwriting and typescript, sometimes clear in bold characters, 1

2 but elsewhere has almost disappeared or is superimposed with other writing and 2
3 hardly legible. Sometimes English words mingle with Arabic ones. In Kassel, where 3
4 Documenta was hosted, the artist created a register of the traces and fragments she 4
5 found, and translated some handwritten inscriptions of the former owners into 5
6 German and English, exhibiting them on billboards, in public spaces, weaving a 6
7 dialogue with history and place. Ex libris, in fact, takes place in the Zwehrenturm, 7
8 the area of the Fridericiarum Museum where manuscripts were stored and that 8
9 survived the 1941 American bombing that destroyed other volumes kept in the 9
10 museum library. Jacir also concentrated on the postwar period when the region of 10
11 Hessel-Kassel was occupied by American forces. Here, the Offenbach Archival 11
12 Depot, which hosted the books and manuscripts looted by the Nazis, instituted a 12
13 process of restitution, the largest in a US zone up until then. Interlacing past and 13

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14 present experiences of siege and destruction (perpetuated by the United States and 14
15 Israel), and superseding the borders of different histories and geographies (North 15
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America, Central Europe, the Middle East), the artist appears to re-actualise the
process of restitution, giving it a disruptive meaning that questions the very idea
of ownership. The Palestinian books that were once brutally appropriated are now
registered in a public vision and space, through a creative gesture that renders
them unappropriable and uncontainable. What the artwork produces is not simply
a recuperation of what was lost, but the transformation of the loss into a possibility
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22 of a potency that goes beyond colonial power towards a different re-collection that 22
23 activates memory as difference. 23
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26 Border-crossings 26
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28 In the frame of a postcolonial constellation that is simultaneously theoretical 28
29 and practical, we could think of a different configuration of space, based on the 29
30 centrality of transits and transcultural movements. Zygmunt Bauman’s ideas 30
31 about a ‘liquid modernity’ emphasise the centrality of fluidity as a fitting metaphor 31
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32 to grasp the complexity of contemporary society (Bauman 2000). Modernity, 32

33 according to him, has always been liquid. The absence of finishing lines attests to 33
34 a permanent state of change with no clear destinations. His ideas do not merely 34
35 celebrate this condition, but also envision a frightening scenario. Indeed, the 35
36 melting of solid bonds into more precarious and individually conducted lives can 36
37 generate the proliferation of private interests and feelings of anxiety over security. 37
38 In this way, every incoming body can be a source of fear. This emotion registers 38
39 the proximity of others and creates rigid boundaries in daily life: ‘Fear works to 39
40 align bodily and social space: it works to enable some bodies to inhabit and move 40
41 in public space through restricting the mobility of other bodies to spaces that are 41
42 enclosed or contained’ (Ahmed 2004, 70). 42
43 Past histories of slavery and civilising missions survive in the present and 43
44 activate a proliferation of stereotypes. In the context of migration, these ideas find a 44

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 Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 5

1 striking example. If liquidity encourages the mobility of human beings and capital, 1
2 it also involves many human beings experiencing a restriction on their right to 2
3 move. This is particularly evident for migrants, asylum seekers and those seeking 3
4 a ‘better life’, as the artist Isaac Julien puts it. In his audio-visual installation 4
5 WESTERN UNION: Small Boats (2007), contorted black bodies gasp in the foam 5
6 or lie lifeless on the shores of the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa. In this 6
7 artwork memory becomes a strategy of aesthetic engagement. In order to dislocate 7
8 the linearity of the narration and the authorial voice, the formal construction of 8
9 Julien’s installation, elaborated on multiple screens in museum spaces, shows the 9
10 impossibility of presenting the fullness of memory. Floating histories of diasporic 10
11 and subaltern bodies exceed any logic of framing. 11
12 The propagation of bodies in the critical space of the Mediterranean Sea is a 12
13 source of fear in the racialised regime of global information. Such proximities 13

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14 are seen as a threat to the safety of the nation-states. Cultural differences are 14
15 intensified and charged with danger, while those lives submerged beneath the 15
16 waves of modernity are rarely registered. As Iain Chambers has suggested, the 16
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adoption of a ‘critical mourning’ is necessary – that is, a tracing of the continuous
resonance between the past and the present (Chambers 2001). His ‘maritime
criticism’ exposes existing knowledge to unsuspected questions and unauthorised
interruptions, ‘by folding it into other times, other textures, other ways of being
in a multiple modernity’ (Chambers 2008, 33). This means that we should take a
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22 heterogeneous modernity into account and adopt a postcolonial cartography that 22
23 rethinks cultural places such as the Mediterranean as sites of stratification. The 23
24 emphasis on human and cultural connections through and across the sea refines 24
25 the ways in which global history is framed. A ‘new thalassology’ emerges, a 25
26 cultural-historical framework based on the centrality of the sea in the making of 26
27 global history (Horden and Purcell 2006). The Mediterranean is here rethought in 27
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28 terms of complexity and variability within an emerging critical connectivity. At 28

29 the same time, Europe is unmade as a fixed space of exclusion and privilege, and 29
30 remade as a fluid space of multiple contaminations and transcultural differences. 30
31 So, European territories become a privileged terrain for the discussion of global 31
32 flows and forces, and an exemplary site for investigating the question of migration 32
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33 in its material, historical, symbolic and creative developments. 33

34 A possibility or even necessity unfolds here: rethinking and overcoming the 34
35 existing notions of heritage, patrimony, property, their embodiment in memory, 35
36 history, place, belonging, and the multiple means and modes in which they are 36
37 sustained. In this sense, the Mediterranean region, with its migrant histories, serves 37
38 as a paradigm of border-crossings through artistic production, as in Julien’s video 38
39 installation cited above. Besides visual production, other artistic works express a 39
40 contamination of sounds, languages and memories. For instance, a new musical 40
41 genre has recently developed in the Mediterranean area, Harraga rap, a product 41
42 of the current processes of migration that conducts us directly into the different 42
43 currents of time. This music is created by North African migrant artists and takes 43
44 its name from an Arabic word meaning literally ‘burning’: metaphorically, it 44

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 6 The Postcolonial Museum

1 indicates travelling without documents. What these lyrics declare is a desire for 1
2 life that translates into the challenge to burn the frontier. This rap music circulates 2
3 in the suburbs of Tunis, Algiers and Tangiers, as well as in the Italian island of 3
4 Lampedusa, which represents the first landing for many of the southern migrants 4
5 in their passage to Europe. Emblematically, it is also known as ‘Lampedusa rap’. 5
6 Border-crossing is the constitutive trait of Harraga music. It emerges from 6
7 experiences of migration and the engendering processes of hybridisation through 7
8 the mixture and conflation of various Mediterranean sounds and languages 8
9 (Arabic, French, English and Italian). In a way, Harraga music reconnects to the 9
10 tales of transit and cultural interlacing that have historically characterised the 10
11 Mediterranean region, and even to the construction of modernity traced back to the 11
12 Atlantic migrations. But it also reminds us of how in today’s ‘Fortress Europe’, as 12
13 with the Western imperialism of the past, the desire for border-crossing succumbs 13

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14 to the violence of security policies, thus often becoming an experience of refusal, 14
15 exclusion, and even death. The bodies, the voices, the languages and the histories 15
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of the migrants immediately transpose us into an unexpected recognition of shared 16
spaces and times, in the common, frequently silenced, history of migration.
If this music – that ultimately breaks up the discomforting continuity between 18
the violence of past and present colonialisms – can contribute to rewrite (the 19
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aesthetics and ethics of) the frontier, in the form of chants of desire, it also functions 20
as a cultural reminder not only of past, but also of present and future narratives 21
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22 of border-crossings and transmissions. It contributes to the reconceptualisation 22
23 of institutionalised notions of heritage, memory, belonging and the archive. A 23
24 memory of the future is announced. This undermines the conservative paradigms 24
25 and apparatuses that sustain ‘our’ heritage, soliciting the question ‘Whose 25
26 heritage?’ and undermining inherited pretensions of legitimate authorship and 26
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27 ownership (Hall 2002). 27

28 Such artistic experiences illustrate how postcolonial art emerges through an 28
29 intertwining of art and life, articulating what Jacques Rancière ([2004] 2006) 29
30 defines as the ‘politics of the collage’ between politics and aesthetics and, in 30
31 the words of Edouard Glissant (1997), a ‘poetics of relation’, where points of 31
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32 connection are inseparable from interruptions, intervals and lines of flights. The 32
33 postcolonial artwork, in other words, elaborates an ethical-aesthetic cut ‘across 33
34 and within an inherited Occidental art discourse that leads simultaneously to 34
35 recovery and renewal … the autonomy of art and aesthetic suddenly becomes a 35
36 pressing ethical and political issue’ (Chambers 2012, 22–3). 36
37 Within the complex and contested cartography of global modernity, the 37
38 encounter with postcolonial art reveals life emerging from processes of 38
39 connection and disconnection, conjunctions and differences, territorialisation and 39
40 deterritorialisation. We are critically confronted with a disorienting proximity 40
41 between local and global, inside and outside, past and present, here and there, 41
42 the self and the other, life and death. Art transposes us into an opaque zone where 42
43 distinctions between spaces of tension and ‘contact zones’ (Pratt 1992), frictions 43
44 and connections are blurred. In this sense, border-crossing is not simply the 44

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 Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 7

1 methodology of a postcolonial aesthetics, but also and simultaneously an ethics, a 1

2 politics, an epistemology. 2
3 The artworks described above can be considered as diffused traces of a shared 3
4 migrant heritage. This is invariably repressed in the linearity of Occidental 4
5 accounts of history and memory. Migrant aesthetics transposes us into an 5
6 alternative cartography, where the injunction to ‘burn the frontier’, coming from 6
7 subaltern voices, translates into a rejection of the Western legacy of limits and 7
8 the confines of a specific cultural legacy. This is a map that stretches the cultural 8
9 and geographical horizons drawn by both official historiography and museology. 9
10 It goes beyond the ‘white walls’ of the museum (Curti 2012), to exceed its space 10
11 and time. The postcolonial aesthetics dislocates and reinvents museum spaces and 11
12 memorial practices, and disseminates alternative ways of elaborating and sharing 12
13 memories. The conceptual limits and the physical boundaries of the archive are 13

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14 overcome, as art transforms the museum, recognising in public space, the streets 14
15 and the sea a liquid and fluid archive of migrant memories. 15
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The Museum of ‘Cold and Old’
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As Michel Foucault observed, museums function as ‘heterotopias’ – like other
cultural institutions, they are places in the immediate ‘beyond’ of time and
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22 space. Here existing forms of social, political and biological rules, such as 22
23 physical pleasure, corruption or decay, seem to fall into abeyance. The mirror is 23
24 the material and symbolic icon of all heterotopias, in so far as it does not exist 24
25 separately from the external world that it reflects and inverts. It manifests reality in 25
26 a tiny synchronic space where the relations with the external world are visible but 26
27 nevertheless turned upside down, protected and exposed at the same time, in each 27
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28 case non-modifiable. You can observe the codification of reality in a mirror, its 28
29 appearing and disappearing, but you cannot intervene in the process of its reversed 29
30 functioning (Foucault 1986). 30
31 An archive functions in much the same way: by storing ‘real’ objects (or ideas), 31
32 it preserves them from the corruptions of reality. The discourse of the archive 32
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33 reflects the rules of the external world, yet maintains its own internal dynamics, its 33
34 own language. The archive, as Foucault suggests, is ‘the first law of what can be 34
35 said, the system that governs the appearance [and disappearance] of statements as 35
36 unique events’ (Foucault 1972, 129). Conditio sine qua non for all the discourses 36
37 that intersect the world at certain periods, crossed by interruptions, fissures and 37
38 frictions, the archive functions precisely through this non-homogeneous texture. 38
39 Outside its non-linear rules, nothing can manifest itself as a ‘unique event’, worthy 39
40 of being remembered and celebrated. Therefore, the archive as a mirror of reality 40
41 is also the set of rules that determines the memorial and aesthetic processes that 41
42 are to be remembered and registered. 42
43 As Jacques Derrida points out, the archive is haunted by the risk of falling 43
44 into the abyss of its own premises and ruins. There exists an ‘archiviolithic drive’ 44

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 8 The Postcolonial Museum

1 towards suffocation (Derrida 1995), a sort of centripetal force that is always prone 1
2 to destroying the living quality of memory. The compulsion to store and preserve 2
3 memory kills every attempt at re-qualifying the present and taking responsibility 3
4 for the future. 4
5 In Leila Aboulela’s 1999 short story ‘The Museum’, published in her collection 5
6 Coloured Lights (Aboulela 2001), such premises appear in all their force.1 Shadia, 6
7 a clever yet confused Sudanese student in Scotland studying for a master’s, 7
8 finds herself ill at ease, stuck in a country imbued with both racist prejudices 8
9 and orientalistic images of Africa. The difficulties of the migrant condition and 9
10 of the courses, as well as the pervasive pessimism that circulates among the non- 10
11 European students, undermine their self-esteem and their capacities: 11
12 12
13 The course required a certain background, a background she didn’t have. So she 13

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14 floundered, she and the other African students …. 14
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Us and them, she thought. The ones who would do well, the ones who would
crawl and sweat and barely pass. Two predetermined groups. … ‘These people
think they own the world.’ (Aboulela 2001, 100)

Thanks to the initially difficult, yet enriching, friendship with Bryan, a Scottish
course-mate who helps her survive the classes, Shadia manages to experience
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22 this difficult situation diversely. She finds moments of real communication, or at 22
23 least of intercultural dialogue and translation, we might argue, even in the close- 23
24 minded Aberdeen college: a heterotopia, yet one of the saddest types. Towards 24
25 the end of the story, though, she is overwhelmed by the same negative feelings of 25
26 surrender that are drastically debilitating the African students. One day, invited 26
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27 by Bryan, who is eager to demonstrate his willingness to learn about her country, 27
28 to an African museum in Aberdeen, she experiences the disappointment and the 28
29 almost physical sensation of collapse and being ‘scotomised’, as a living African, 29
30 under the aseptically false descriptions of her country that she discovers in the 30
31 museum. This is a prototype of the ‘exhibitionary complex’ described by Tony 31
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32 Bennett (1988), where the young woman is disturbed by her own interiorisation of 32
33 the gaze of the powerful others, and yet opposes it: 33
34 34
35 During the 18th and 19th centuries, north-east Scotland made a disproportionate 35
36 impact on the world at large by contributing so many skilled and committed 36
37 individuals …. In serving an empire they gave and received, changed others and 37
38 were themselves changed and often returned home with tangible reminders of 38
39 their experiences. 39
40 40
41 The tangible reminders were there to see, preserved in spite of the years. Her 41
42 eyes skimmed over the disconnected objects out of place and time. … Nothing 42
43 43
44 1  ‘The Museum’ received the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000. 44

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 Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 9

1 was of her, nothing belonged to her life at home, what she missed. Here was 1
2 Europe’s vision, the clichés about Africa: cold and old. (Aboulela 2001, 115) 2
3 3
4 The museum seems to have accomplished its task, at least according to Shadia’s 4
5 fears: it proves to be a mausoleum that consolidates not only the distance 5
6 between the hosting/hostile milieu and her mother country, but also her own 6
7 cultural prejudices, her gaze on herself and her situation. Nothing is expected 7
8 to change. No space is left to allow the cultural institution to fill the gap – or 8
9 try to take notice of it – between the migrant’s expectations of integrating 9
10 and improving her life and the delusive experience of cultural dominance or 10
11 the erasing of difference. In much the same way, the college fails to help the 11
12 African students fill their gaps in mathematics: lacunas due to the educational 12
13 system that Britain’s supremacy had exported to Africa. ‘Museums change, I can 13

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14 change,’ Bryan pleads with her when noticing the discouragement clouding her 14
15 beautiful face (Aboulela 2001, 119), but nothing seems to change at all. Social, 15
16 political, educational circumstances overwhelm an already worn-out girl, lost in 16
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between the mirage of home – where she was unhappy and unsatisfied – and the
nightmare (at least, so it seems) of an inhospitable, racist country.
Although published eight years after the hopeful, vibrant book Imaginary
Homelands in which Salman Rushdie surely changed the discourse and
perceptions on migrations, Aboulela’s story is paradigmatic of an experience
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22 of delusion and immutableness. In Imaginary Homelands, Rushdie writes: ‘to 22
23 migrate is to experience deep changes and wrenches in the soul, but the migrant 23
24 is not simply transformed by his act, he also transforms the new world. Migrants 24
25 might well become mutants, but it is out of such hybridisation that newness can 25
26 emerge’ (Rushdie 1991, 210).2 Compared to this visionary theory, Bryan’s words 26
27 of change seem ingenuous and superficial: from the very beginning of this short 27
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28 story we are confronted with his orientalistic perceptions.3 Shadia’s reactions 28

29 to the spectacle of Africa as a place both ‘cold and old’ are comprehensible: 29
30 the offensive simplifications of a massive memorial archive of conquest and 30
31 national self-celebration threaten her living memories, reducing them to mere 31
32 opposition and sterile nostalgia that proves unable to change the situation. The 32
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33 display of savagery and passivity she is compelled to stare at is symptomatic of 33

34 a whole discourse: an archive of prejudices, we might say, based on ignorance, 34
35 indifference and carelessness: full of holes; an archive constructed on voids, 35
36 oblivion, erasures, on worlds that are rendered non-existent, both in the past 36
37 37
38 38
2  This idea of ‘newness’ emerging out of the migrant condition is reworked by Homi
39 39
Bhabha (1994), who brings out Rushdie’s words further, theorising on a radical position
40 40
of ‘in-betweenness’ of the postcolonial and the migrant subject, capable of inventing new
41 positions and strategies for survival. 41
42 3 His ‘positive’ orientalism sees Shadia as a princess, and Sudan as nothing more than 42
43 a remote country that he is unable to locate in Africa. As for La Mecca, it is a place he says 43
44 he is fond of, but then he naively confesses to have only seen it in a book. 44

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 10 The Postcolonial Museum

1 and the present, as the Bangladeshi artist and curator Ebadur Rahman seems to 1
2 remind us in ‘There is Not Yet a World’ (Chapter 5 of this volume). 2
3 Foucault suggests that it is precisely around these holes – fissured, interrupted 3
4 networks of discourse and reality – that the archive can both validate itself and, 4
5 conversely, be seriously threatened by the difference(s) it can neither control nor 5
6 store. The present is likely to change, if accepted for what it is. The present as a 6
7 present is a gift, but also a responsibility we are invited to respond to in order to 7
8 preserve life from the ghosts, the remnants and the discursive limits inherited from 8
9 the past. 9
10 Change inscribes itself in the very nature of the archive: a dispositif, a technology 10
11 of power that we are always able to subvert. According to Foucault, power is 11
12 a ‘strategic game’, a relationship that, unlike sheer violence and domination, is 12
13 always subjected to change:4 13

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15 [It] can only be articulated on the basis … that ‘the other’ (the one over whom 15
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power is exercised) be thoroughly recognised and maintained to the very end as
a person who acts; and that, faced with a relationship of power, a whole field
of responses, reactions, effects and possible inventions may open up. (Foucault
1982, 789)

Therefore, as Maurizio Lazzarato underlines in analysing Foucault, ‘the analysis of

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22 power dispositifs should then begin … with the dynamic of forces and the “freedom” 22
23 of subjects’ (Lazzarato 2002, 107). What postcolonial subjects often experience in 23
24 the ethnographic museum is still the political dominance of the cultural institution, 24
25 the silent violence of hermeneutics and display that they may feel unable not only to 25
26 bear, but also to confront, owing to personal and political frailty. As subjects, though, 26
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27 they always have the potential to subvert this relationship and free themselves 27
28 through creation, unpredictability and even chaos, rather than continue the charade 28
29 of an imposed identity. Nevertheless, as in this short story, intense social, economic 29
30 and cultural yokes may overwhelm them. In this asphyxiating and tiny margin of 30
31 space and action, are inventions and creations likely to happen? Is it possible to 31
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32 change one’s political position from the ‘exotic other’ to the subject of change and 32
33 political creativity, to change museums from within? 33
34 As bell hooks puts it, margins are precisely the locations in which change 34
35 happens, where those people ‘who are unwilling to play the role of “exotic Other”’ 35
36 have to ‘invent spaces of radical openness’ (hooks 1990, 148). And this is both an 36
37 ethical and an aesthetical praxis, as she further explains: 37
38 38
39 Our living depends on our ability to conceptualize alternatives, often improvised. 39
40 Theorizing about this experience aesthetically, critically is an agenda for radical 40
41 cultural practice. 41
42 42
43 4 See also Antonio Gramsci’s distinctions between ‘cultural hegemony’ (power, in a 43
44 Foucauldian sense) and coercive dominance. 44

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 Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 11

1 For me this space of radical openness is a margin – a profound edge. Locating 1

2 oneself there is difficult yet necessary. It is not a ‘safe’ place. One is always at 2
3 risk. One needs a community of resistance. (hooks 1990, 149) 3
4 4
5 In the margins of culture, where the totalising and homogenising project of the 5
6 archive fails and reveals itself as a discourse in the making, resistance is always 6
7 possible. For hooks, as for Hall, with whom she discusses his notion of the 7
8 ‘politics of articulation’, creative resistance is also a question of language: for 8
9 her, speaking with one’s own words, while for Hall, it involves inventing new 9
10 forms of expression out of encounters and conflict.5 Even museums will have 10
11 to reinvent their language to face the challenge of the contemporary, an epoch 11
12 massively informed by migrations, planetary interdependence and networks of 12
13 fluxes and information, and yet still deeply scarred by old and new colonialisms, 13

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14 marginalisation, economic and political inequality, racisms and sexisms. 14
15 How do museums ‘de-colonialise ’ themselves, not so much to ingenuously 15
16 get rid of the burden of the past and the stereotypes of ‘First-Worldism’, but rather 16
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to undo and radically interrogate the more subtle and widespread mono-cultural
perspectives of culture and the encompassing épistémè which imbues their
language, self-perception and discourses? How will European museums succeed
in ‘marginalising’ themselves, not merely to offer space to the ‘periphery’, or to
tacitly ‘host’ and acculturate the others that come from the ‘margins’, but rather
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22 to recover creativity and new energy? How can museums cease being a ‘curated’ 22
23 place, a space rendered anaesthetised, immune and impermeable to the story of 23
24 traumas and wounds, a place that, as the Moroccan curator and psychoanalyst 24
25 Tarek Elhaik suggests in Chapter 12 of this volume, is incapable of hosting the 25
26 problematic instance of ‘incurable images’ coming from elsewhere? In the light 26
27 of these questions, museums become unstable, marginal, exceed their white walls, 27
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28 and open themselves to the possibility of a postcolonial museum yet to come. 28

29 29
30 30
31 Unexpected Visions 31
32 32
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33 Museum narratives build national and cultural identity through framing. As 33

34 Ursula Biemann suggests in Chapter 16 of this volume, the museum does not 34
35 35
36 36
37 5  This importance of community and encounters, translated into the museal space, 37
38 recalls recent studies based on community museums, in particular Museum Frictions: 38
Public Cultures/Global Transformations (Karp et al. 2006) and Museums and Their
39 39
Communities (Watson 2007). Recognising the power relationships and the frictions that
40 40
inform museum and representation, seen as arenas of conflictive perspectives and battles,
41 these studies call for forms of co-operative, participating, more equal relationships, based 41
42 on respect and trust between curators and source communities, as well as consultation, co- 42
43 curatorship, listening. In particular, the essays in Museum Frictions insist on the margins 43
44 as places of change. 44

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 12 The Postcolonial Museum

1 merely store artefacts and exhibit facts, it is the very apparatus of difference – in 1
2 other words, a ‘boundary-drawing device’. Many of the frames of thought that 2
3 form the essential foundation of the museum represent the legacy of nineteenth- 3
4 century ideas and have to be re-imagined. The neutrality of museums needs to 4
5 be deconstructed in order to advocate a new museum theory, or critical museum 5
6 theory, that is about decolonising and cross-cultural exchange (Marstine 2010). 6
7 The very idea of ‘authenticity’, as Aboulela’s short story reminds us, is an 7
8 illusion, an idea conceived in the late eighteenth century, when the museum 8
9 was born in Europe and then developed as an exhibitionary dispositif of the 9
10 civilising mission. The strategies of archiving and classifying lie at the very 10
11 heart of Western modernity; in this context, museums were means of power and 11
12 knowledge exhibiting cultural forms and the regulation of bodies and discourses 12
13 (Bal 1996). The modern museum is part of an institutional ‘exhibitionary 13

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14 complex’ that has allowed the development and circulation of disciplines such as 14
15 biology, history, and anthropology (Bennett 1988). This complex of institutions 15
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with their practice of ‘showing and telling’ – that is, the exhibition of objects
and the construction of cultural meanings and values – is a pedagogy. The
organisation of space and of the relation between the viewing subject and the
viewed object were central to this complex for establishing norms of public
conduct and strategies of surveillance.
In the formation of the museum, vision has a central role. Here, we can
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22 use the theoretical tools of visual culture to reveal the frictions and tensions 22
23 that constitute that formation. Considered as a field of study, visual culture is 23
24 concerned with the cultural practices of looking and seeing; it considers the 24
25 image as a sign or text that produces meaning (Hall and Evans 1999). However, 25
26 since these meanings cannot be completed within the text, they require the 26
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27 subjective capacities of the viewer to make the images signify. This leads to a 27
28 theory of visuality that investigates and indeed questions the relation between 28
29 subject and object. Visuality focuses on questions of visibility, knowledge and 29
30 power. We know that the gaze produces the subject through complex processes 30
31 which are both social and psychic. If we think of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, 31
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32 White Masks ([1952] 1986), this dynamics becomes very clear. It is through the 32
33 power of the gaze that Fanon understands himself as a black subaltern subject. 33
34 Nicholas Mirzoeff elaborates the visual as an interdisciplinary and 34
35 ‘challenging place of social interaction and definition in terms of class, gender, 35
36 sexual and racialized identities’ (Mirzoeff 1999, 4). Visuality is developed as a 36
37 problematic space, where it is possible to re-think the consolidation of power in 37
38 a visualised model and with the logic of belongingness and location. Subjects, 38
39 as Mirzoeff reminds us, are defined both as agents of sight and as objects of a 39
40 visual discourse. In the context of museum studies, the interpretive frame of 40
41 visual culture makes it possible to investigate vision in its social and cultural 41
42 dimension and to declare a critical approach to the objects, collections, and so 42
43 on. Considered in its cultural politics, the museum raises important questions 43
44 of interpretation. In particular, attention is devoted to the construction of 44

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 Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 13

1 meanings and values that take place in its space. As Hooper-Greenhill suggests, 1
2 museums are deeply related to questions of representation and power, especially 2
3 ‘the power to name, to represent common sense, to create official versions, to 3
4 represent the social world, and to represent the past’ (Hooper-Greenhill 2000, 4
5 19). So questions need to be asked about meanings: since they are always plural, 5
6 there cannot be a single way of framing objects. 6
7 The museum vision, far from referring only to the mere capacity of the 7
8 eyes, works as a technology of power and becomes controversial given the 8
9 strategies of inclusion and exclusion that are drawn upon. It is also in this 9
10 deep interrelation between visuality and power within the museum that the 10
11 postcolonial challenge occurs. This development in critical theory suggests an 11
12 enhanced significance of spatiality. As Irit Rogoff suggests, the critical process 12
13 of spatiality insists on ‘the multi-inhabitation of spaces through bodies, social 13

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14 relations and psychic dynamics’ (Rogoff 2000, 23). This is in contrast with 14
15 nation-states which insist on a singular inhabitation under one dominant rule. 15
16 Since space is always differentiated and characterised by boundary lines, visual 16
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illusion of a transparent locality.
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culture aims to repopulate space with all the unknown images removed by the

In this sense, the visual arts suggest ways to experiment and reconfigure
theories because they register the differentiation of space and the coexistence
of multiple belongings. For example, Isaac Julien’s The Attendant (1993)
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22 is a provocative short film that is set in a museum. In this artwork, after the 22
23 ambiguous and sensual encounter between the middle-aged black attendant 23
24 of the museum and a younger white man, a nineteenth-century painting that 24
25 depicts a slave’s capture comes to life. The attendant expresses a homosexual 25
26 desire, materialised in his fantasies about the young visitor and his imagination 26
27 of real bodies that replace the paintings exhibited in a cold and institutionalised 27
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28 museum. The logic of the viewing subject and the viewed object is subverted 28
29 as the characters of the paintings look at the attendant and populate the space 29
30 with hidden histories of race and gay male sexuality. Therefore, this short film 30
31 allows not only the return of a repressed unconscious, but also interrupts the 31
32 monumental sacrality of the museum. In The Attendant, as in Julien’s subsequent 32
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33 installations Vagabondia (2000) and Baltimore (2003), the museum is the 33

34 key theme and location of an artistic strategy that contributes to a theoretical 34
35 reflection on the transformation of this institution. Contemporary exhibitionary 35
36 complexes are set in motion by the circulation of hidden and border-crossing 36
37 realities. At the same time, the museum becomes a space of intervention that 37
38 engenders productive and experimental encounters. Art confirms itself as a 38
39 possibility of change. Far from being the place of the already known, ready 39
40 to be transmitted, or the place where the spectacle of ‘the contemporary’ is 40
41 consumed (Debord 1990), it becomes the space of imagination and desire, 41
42 where the unexpected comes into being, but is also the space of questioning, 42
43 and even silences. The museum becomes a disrupting, ‘incurable’ space of both 43
44 hospitality and hostility. 44

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 14 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Living the Place, Archiving the Space 1

2 2
3 At this point, the question of spatiality needs to be explored. Michel de Certeau 3
4 talks about the difference between place and space defining the first as ‘the order 4
5 (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of 5
6 coexistence’. He adds: ‘space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of 6
7 directions, velocities and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersections 7
8 of mobile elements …. Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations 8
9 that orient it, situate it, temporalize it’ (de Certeau 1984, 117). As a place for the 9
10 collection of objects, the museum is now experiencing new possibilities of co- 10
11 existence, mainly via the production of social conditions rather than through the 11
12 disposition of artworks. It becomes a space composed of mobile elements and new 12
13 intersections. Here the ‘place’, where objects are pre-ordered, is experienced as a 13

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14 new medium meeting the needs of different public subjects. 14
15 An alternative way to inhabit the space of the museum, through encounter 15
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and live experiences, questions the traditional understandings of museum
collections and the laws of the ‘place’. New artistic practices inhabit the museum
as a space of political and social encounters aiming at producing the conditions
of a heterogeneous new audience. They engage in a process of co-individuation
(Simondon 1989; Stiegler 1998) where both the ‘I’ (the artist) and the ‘we’ (the
audiences) are socially and politically transformed by real-world issues such as
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22 the impact of financial crises and the subsequent social and labour conditions of 22
23 life and work. 23
24 Many of these practices are experiencing a shared process of becoming 24
25 collectivity as ‘a coexistence of being singular plural’ (Nancy 2000, 3). Jean-Luc 25
26 Nancy talks of the impossibility of existing singularly without the plural: ‘Being 26
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27 cannot be anything but being-with-one-another, circulating in the with and as 27

28 the with of this singularly plural coexistence’ (Nancy 2000, 3). Taking Nancy’s 28
29 formulation of coexistence in its literal meaning as an existing together interval, a 29
30 being in common moment – at the same time and in the same place – the production 30
31 of collectivity is experienced as a relational approach and as a different modality 31
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32 for inhabiting space, disrupting the dominant uses of the museum. 32

33 Focusing on the transformative potentialities of the spatiality of the museum, 33
34 the concept of coexistence allows a re-articulation of the traditional role of the 34
35 museum as a display machine. It produces an altogether more powerful ‘social 35
36 technology’, imagining possible connections between producers and receivers that 36
37 are not mediated by the traditional form of the artwork (Karp et al. 2006). Taking 37
38 into account a critical reflection on global capitalism and neo-liberalism in order 38
39 to explore the complexity of the dynamics involved in the relation between the 39
40 artist, the institution and the audience, it is worth underlining that the concept of 40
41 collectivity occupies an important role in many contemporary theoretical works: 41
42 from Paolo Virno to Giorgio Agamben, Nancy, Hannah Arendt, Michael Hardt 42
43 and Toni Negri. Understanding how this concept enters the museum space in order 43
44 to change its exhibitionary function means tracing the way in which these critical 44

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 Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 15

1 approaches have dealt with such a concept in the light of the social transformations 1
2 of neo-liberal society. 2
3 Virno, for example, speaks of the necessity of a new articulation of the 3
4 relations between the collective and the individual. In order to understand our 4
5 singularity, we have to look at the collective as a field of radical individualisation. 5
6 His approach focuses on a set of relationships that define us as collectivity, from 6
7 the social to the individual: 7
8 8
9 Instead of connecting given singularities, this ‘set of relationships’ constitutes 9
10 these single individuals as such. Human nature is located in such a thing that – 10
11 not belonging to any individual mind – only exists in the relation between the 11
12 many. To speak of human means to develop a philosophy of the preposition 12
13 ‘between’. (Virno 2002) 13

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15 In the recent past, a search for unity as a coexistence of different singularities 15
16 has been actualised by collaborative actions, co-working activities, newly 16
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formed communities informed by the idea that a collective ‘set of relationships’
between different people, a social engagement of being in common, follows all the
economical and political shifts of capitalist society. Within this overall frame, the
museum experiences new conditions of artistic production. These lead to stressing
the importance of the transformative centrality of social production as a sharper
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22 separation between the artist as a producer, the institution as a hegemonic model 22
23 of social organisation, the consumption and circulation of the artworks, comes into 23
24 play. New economic practices involve different collectivities in the museum space, 24
25 defining what elsewhere has been called immaterial labour (Lazzarato 1996). 25
26 Among the different public and private cultural institutions where immaterial 26
27 labour takes place, the museum has a prominent position. It involves irregular 27
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28 forms of working experiences, intermittent and without a guarantee of a future 28

29 income, often without an income at all, or else forms of attachment to work as 29
30 a ‘mode of contemporary self-disciplining’ (McRobbie 2007). In other words, 30
31 work increasingly replaces life itself. It defines contemporary life as a precarious 31
32 social condition, essential to new neo-liberal strategies for dealing with immaterial 32
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33 labour. As it becomes the capitalist norm, ‘precariousness’, as a new contemporary 33

34 concept, is experienced in multiple forms of immaterial and affective labour, 34
35 especially in contemporary art practices. In order to understand how precariousness 35
36 has changed the rules of the game in cultural institutions, it is necessary to consider 36
37 the generational transformations of the social condition of work. 37
38 Precariousness presents itself as a generational social condition that obliges 38
39 a deeper understanding of the relations between capital and the new creative 39
40 forms of labour. Rather than a biological phenomenon, the concept of generations 40
41 is identified as a technological one with its limits and possibilities (Berardi 41
42 2009). Those limits and possibilities are the basis for a new process of social 42
43 recomposition of social subjectivities, of alternative ways to experience work not 43
44 in opposition to capital, but as an independent form of precariousness (Lazzarato 44

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 16 The Postcolonial Museum

1 1997).6 New subjectivities are in transition along the razor-thin border between 1
2 the spheres of work and life. The limits and possibilities of labour, framed in the 2
3 wider understanding of creative labour inside and outside the museum, leads to 3
4 rethinking the production of subjectivity as the ‘raw material’ of immaterial labour 4
5 (Lazzarato 1990).7 5
6 In 2012, the Unilever Turbine Hall at Tate Modern was crowded every day 6
7 with the same bunch of 70 people.8 This swarm participated in a collective 7
8 performance by the British-German artist Tino Sehgal, whose work deals with 8
9 questions of attention and encounter beyond cultural belongings in public spaces 9
10 such as the museum. For his new artwork, Sehgal held some collective workshops 10
11 that explored, with participants of all ages, cultural background and experience, 11
12 the relational encounters between people inside the ‘social technology’ of the 12
13 museum. The artist is well known for his objectless art practice. He does not allow 13

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14 documentation of his work at any stage. This strategy has been developed in order 14
15 to avoid adding more objects to the world of consumer society. Through gestures, 15
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actions and speeches, he creates tableaux vivants that he calls ‘constructed
situations’. These are subject to the radical temporality of their duration and
intensity. Museum visitors, as well as people dressed as museum attendants, chant,
scream, walk towards other visitors or just interact with each other in a play in
which there should be no rules and interpreters.
The result is often unpredictable. A dynamic interplay of ‘constructed’ chaos
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22 emerges from the affective presence of the collectivity. Sehgal’s way of conceiving 22
23 a becoming collectivity again recalls Nancy in the sense of being exposed to others. 23
24 The constructed situation seems to be precisely the ‘set of relationships’ in a swarm 24
25 of people literally occupying the cultural, social and economic spatiality of Tate 25
26 Modern, one of the sanctuaries of contemporary art. We could possibly criticise 26
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27 this aim to create ‘experimental encounters’ in terms of conservative strategies, 27

28 for they conceive of artistic production as a compensatory activity, an activity 28
29 where individuals communicate their personal emotions, experiences, memories 29
30 and desires without linking them critically to the matrix of social and cultural 30
31 forces from which they emerge. Still, there is an unpredictable force that emerges 31
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32 from this chaos. 32

33 33
34 6 In particular on the possibility to envisage a process of collective subjectivation and 34
35 social solidarity and imagine a movement in the sense of a collective process of intellectual 35
36 and political transformation of reality (Berardi 2009). 36
37 7  The production of subjectivity recalls the Foucauldian technology of the self: 37
38 modes of ‘subjectivation’ and of ‘subjectification’ explore how selves are forged and how 38
they live in ways which are both heteronomously and autonomously determined. They pose
39 39
questions about the limits and possibilities of human activities (Foucault 2007).
40 40
8  Sehgal’s artwork is conceived as part of Tate Modern’s wider project called The
41 Tanks, a lived space hosting performative experiments such as Art in Action Festival, which 41
42 inaugurated The Tanks last July. A new ‘model’ of experiencing the museum as a ‘mass 42
43 medium’, ‘emphasizing the visitor’s own physical presence’, has been stated in the Open 43
44 Manifesto of the programme (Grant and Danby 2012, 2). 44

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1 The intangible rather than compensatory activity of Sehgal’s storytellers 1

2 produces a new space of disturbance, an experiential memory where different 2
3 singularities interact through an event that cannot be planned in advance. You 3
4 never know what is going to happen. In a ‘regime of total immateriality’, as Claire 4
5 Bishop (2004) has defined Sehgal’s approach, the artist aims to provoke a critique 5
6 both of the way in which we collectively inhabit the spatiality of the museum, what 6
7 Hannah Arendt (1998) calls the ‘space of appearance’, and its blurred material 7
8 boundaries. This is linked to the assumption that where a consistent swarm of 8
9 singularities converges, with access to different types of stories and actions, a 9
10 situation is created whose complexity is impossible for single individuals to attain. 10
11 Arendt argued: ‘Only action is entirely dependent upon the constant presence of 11
12 others’ (Arendt 1998, 22–3). Human action is both contingent and unpredictable, 12
13 as is the case in Tino Sehgal’s intangible performative act. 13

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14 The open-ended result is a collective production of desires, a transformation of 14
15 actions, rather than a transformation of material, sustained through the audience’s 15
16 experiential memories. The boundaries of the exhibition space are blurred even 16
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though the scene is inconceivable without its museum stage. The ‘exhibition’ of
an un-restricted space, as a territory of political, cultural and social encounter,
becomes a living archive where the ‘experimental community’, the artwork itself,
is created. There is, as Rogoff would term it, the emergence of other possibilities
for the exchange of shared perspectives or subjectivities. These are forms of
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22 emergent and performative collectivity ‘beyond all the roles that are allotted to 22
23 us in culture-roles such as those of being viewers, listeners or audience members’ 23
24 (Rogoff 2004). Sehgal’s creative practice can also be perceived as a critique of 24
25 the pastoral modality of power that refers to the Foucauldian metaphor of the 25
26 shepherd guiding his flock of sheep (Foucault 1982). This is to explore how 26
27 selves are forged and how they live in ways which are both heteronomously and 27
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28 autonomously determined. It poses questions about the nature of contemporary 28

29 social order, the conceptualisation of power, human freedom and the limits, 29
30 possibilities and sources of human action. 30
31 Sehgal is an example of experimental collective art, an artistic attempt that 31
32 goes beyond the temptation that characterised many earlier community projects: 32
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33 the desire for a ‘lost belonging’. He uses the space and the institutions of art 33
34 as channels for producing his work. The space of appearance created from the 34
35 coexistence of the participants is loaded with the power conceptualised by Arendt 35
36 as the ‘fleeting coming together’ in a moment of action and mutuality by a group 36
37 of people, an experimental community. The encounters between people are mental 37
38 displacements that allow the audience to establish an imaginary and physical 38
39 journey inside a ‘boundless space’. This is to engage with the memories of others, 39
40 investigating, at the same time, your own memory. The whole performance seems 40
41 to ask the audiences to experience the memories of others in order to develop their 41
42 own comprehension of the experimental encounter. 42
43 43
44 44

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 18 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Conclusion 1
2 2
3 It is possible to register a passage here: from the museum as the place where 3
4 objects (artworks, books, archaeological remains) are stored and exposed as 4
5 sacred historical signifiers that embody Memory to the museum as a space that 5
6 generates narratives, events, experiences, new memories. This is the postcolonial 6
7 museum such as ‘The Museum Without Objects’ proposed by Françoise Vergès 7
8 on Réunion Island in Chapter 1 of this volume, or the museo diffuso, a museum 8
9 that spreads through the public space of the city evoked by Viviana Gravano 9
10 in Chapter 8 of this volume. History can be remembered differently. As Vergès 10
11 suggests, it is possible to overcome the accumulative palimpsests of colonial 11
12 culture, opposed by the power of a migrant poetics made up of voices, sounds and 12
13 gestures. The museum dispositif is now faced with the challenge of re-proposing 13

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14 its discourses and practices of representation. The difficulty lies in establishing 14
15 what is ‘representable’ and how this can be proposed when, as postcolonial 15
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aesthetics underlines, images and sounds do not simply stand for life, but rather
can themselves be considered as life. They emerge as a force that exceeds the
status of representation and visuality itself.
The very existence of post-representative languages can be interpreted as an
invitation to consider the possibility of alternative archives, able to account for
a different humanism, a different political economy. The archives of the future
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22 should be able to register, as Ursula Biemann’s video-essay Egyptian Chemistry 22
23 (2012) suggests, the elements of an untameable and unrepresentable ecology that 23
24 reconnect to life as difference, unfolding from the encounter between nature and 24
25 culture, bios and zoe, matter and technology, chemistry and magic. Perhaps a move 25
26 from the limits of an anthropocentric vision to the possibilities of a post-humanist 26
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27 narrative, based on the recognition of an ecology of multiple belonging, is the 27

28 path through which we can approach the dream of postcolonial thought. Strongly 28
29 advocated by Mbembe, this is the dream of a radical humanism, emerging from 29
30 a responsibility toward our historical inheritance, and founded, above all, on the 30
31 distinctions that differentiate us. 31
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32 32
33 33
34 References 34
35 35
36 Aboulela, Leila. 2001. ‘The Museum’. In Coloured Lights. Edinburgh: Polygon. 36
37 Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh 37
38 University Press. 38
39 Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago 39
40 Press. 40
41 Bal, Mieke. 1996. Double Exposure: The Subject of Cultural Analysis. London: 41
42 Routledge. 42
43 Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. 43
44 Bennett, Tony. 1988. ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’. New Formations 4: 73–102. 44

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 Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 19

1 Berardi, Franco ‘Bifo’. 2009. Precarious Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the 1

2 Pathologies of the Post-alpha Generation. London: Minor Compositions. 2
3 Bhabha, Homi K. 1986. ‘Foreword: Remembering Fanon. Self, Psyche and the 3
4 Colonial Condition’. In Black Skin, White Masks, edited by Frantz Fanon. 4
5 London: Pluto Press. 5
6 ——. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. 6
7 Bishop, Claire. 2004. ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’. October 110: 51–79. 7
8 Chambers, Iain. 2001. Culture after Humanism: History, Culture, Subjectivity. 8
9 London: Routledge. 9
10 ——. 2008. Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity. 10
11 Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 11
12 ——. 2012. ‘The Museum of Migrating Modernities’. In Cultural Memory, 12
13 Migrating Modernities and Museum Practices, edited by Beatrice Ferrara. 13

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14 Milan: Politecnico di Milano DPA. 14
15 Curti, Lidia. 2012. ‘Beyond White Walls’. In Cultural Memory, Migrating 15
16 Modernities and Museum Practices. Milan: Politecnico di Milano DPA. 16
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of California Press.

Malcolm Imrie. London: Verso.

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De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University

Debord, Guy. 1990. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. Translated by

Deleuze, Gilles. [1989] 1992. ‘What is a Dispositif?’ In Michel Foucault:

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22 Philosopher, edited by Timothy J. Armstrong. London: Routledge. 22
23 Derrida, Jacques. 1995. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Translated by Eric 23
24 Prenowitz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 24
25 Enwezor, Okwui. 2003. ‘The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a 25
26 State of Permanent Transition’. Research in African Literatures 32(4): 57–82. 26
27 Fanon, Frantz. [1952] 1986. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam 27
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28 Markmann. London: Pluto Press. 28

29 Ferrara, Beatrice, ed. 2012. Cultural Memory, Migrating Modernities and Museum 29
30 Practices. Milan: Politecnico di Milano. 30
31 Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.M. 31
32 Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books. 32
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33 ——. 1982. ‘The Subject and Power’. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. Critical 33
34 Inquiry 8: 777–95. 34
35 ——. 1986. ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’. Diacritics 16: 22–7. 35
36 ——. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 36
37 1977–1978. Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 37
38 Glissant, Edouard. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Translated by Betsy Wing. Ann 38
39 Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. 39
40 Grant, Simon and Charles Danby. 2012. The Tanks Programme Notes. London: 40
41 Pure Print Group. 41
42 Hall, Stuart. 1996. ‘When Was “the Post-colonial”? Thinking at the Limit’. In 42
43 The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, edited by Iain 43
44 Chambers, and Lidia Curti. London: Routledge. 44

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 20 The Postcolonial Museum

1 ——. 2002. ‘Whose Heritage? Unsettling “The Heritage,” Re-imagining the 1

2 Post-Nation’. In The Third Text Reader on Art, Culture, and Theory, edited by 2
3 Rashid Araeen, Sean Cubitt and Ziauddin Sardar. London: Continuum. 3
4 —— and Jessica Evans, eds. 1999. Visual Culture: The Reader. London: Sage. 4
5 hooks, bell. 1990. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: 5
6 South End. 6
7 Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. 2000. Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture. 7
8 London: Routledge. 8
9 Horden, Peregrine and Nicholas Purcell. 2006. ‘The Mediterranean and “the New 9
10 Thalassology”’. The American Historical Review 111(3): 722–40. Accessed 9 10
11 March 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/ahr.111.3.722. 11
12 Karp, Ivan et al. 2006. Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations. 12
13 Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 13

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14 Lazzarato, Maurizio. 1996. ‘Immaterial Labor’. In Radical Thought in Italy: A 14
15 Potential Politics, edited by Paul Virno and Michael Hardt. Minneapolis, MN: 15
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——. 2002. ‘From Biopower to Biopolitics’. Translated by Ivan A. Ramirez. Pli:
The Warwick Journal of Philosophy XIII: 100–12.
Marstine, Janet, ed. 2010. New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Mbembe, Achille. 2008. ‘What is Postcolonial Thinking? An Interview with
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22 Achille Mbembe’. Interview by Olivier Mongin, Nathalie Lempereur and Jean- 22
23 Louis Schlegel. Translated by John Fletcher. Eurozine, 1 September. Accessed 23
24 9 March 2013. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-01-09-mbembe-en. 24
25 html. 25
26 ——. 2011. ‘Provincializing France?’ Translated by Janet Reitman. Public Culture 26
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27 23(1): 85–119. 27
28 McRobbie, Angela. 2007. ‘The Los Angelisation of London: Three Short- 28
29 waves of Young People’s Micro-economies of Culture and Creativity in the 29
30 UK’. Transversal, January. Accessed 27 December 2012. http://eipcp.net/ 30
31 transversal/0207/mcrobbie/en. 31
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32 Mercer, Kobena. 2002. ‘Critical Difference: Art Criticism and Art History’. In 32
33 Changing States: Contemporary Arts and Ideas in an Era of Globalisation, 33
34 edited by Gilane Tawadros. London: Iniva. 34
35 Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 1999. An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Routledge. 35
36 Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2000. Being Singular Plural. Stanford, CA: Stanford University 36
37 Press. 37
38 Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. ‘Introduction’. In Imperial Eyes: Travel, Writing and 38
39 Transculturation. London: Routledge. 39
40 Rancière, Jacques [2004] 2006. ‘Problems and Transformations in Critical Art’. 40
41 In Participation: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Claire Bishop. 41
42 London: Whitechapel Gallery. 42
43 Rogoff, Irit. 2000. Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture. London: Routledge. 43
44 44

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 Disruptive Encounters – Museums, Arts and Postcoloniality 21

1 ——. 2004. ‘We: Collectivities, Mutualities, Participations’. Kein Theather. 1

2 Accessed 12 April 2013. http://theater.kein.org/node/95. 2
3 Rushdie, Salman. 1991. Imaginary Homelands. London: Granta. 3
4 Said, Edward W. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage. 4
5 Simondon, Gilbert. 1989. L’individuation psychique et collective. Paris: Aubier. 5
6 Spivak, Gayatri. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the 6
7 Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 7
8 Stiegler, Bernard. 1998. Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford, 8
9 CA: Stanford University Press. 9
10 Virno, Paolo. 2002. A Grammar of the Multitude. New York: Semiotext(e). 10
11 Watson, Sheila, ed. 2007. Museums and Their Communities. London: Routledge. 11
12 12
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 Part I
1 1
2 2
3 3
4
5
Global Migrations, Transcultural 4
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Heritage 6
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9 9
10 10
11 11
12 12
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Chambers.indb 24 11/22/2013 10:35:27 AM

 1 Chapter 1 1
2 2
3 A Museum Without Objects 3
4 4
5 Françoise Vergès 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
10 This is the history of a project and of its defeat. The project: the Maison des 10
11 civilisations et de l’unité réunionnaise (MCUR), a museum in a French postcolony 11
12 of the Indian Ocean, Réunion Island, launched in 2000 by Réunion Regional 12
13 Council.1 The defeat: the end of a utopia, a Museum Without Objects. In April 13

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14 2010, the local Conservatives came to power in Réunion Regional Council. One 14
15 of their first acts was to put an end to the MCUR project and to disband its team. 15
The decision meant that the project was killed, since two thirds of its funding
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came from the Regional Council (the French state and the European Community
sharing the rest of the 60 million euro budget, covering studies, building and

In this chapter, I will explain how and why the notion of a museum without
objects was chosen and why I think today that the notion of creolisation that was
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22 central to the project needs to be revisited. In my conclusion, I will suggest new 22
23 ways of developing the notion of a museum without objects and why the notion 23
24 can still be useful. In the text, I use large excerpts from the scientific and cultural 24
25 programme I wrote with Carpanin Marimoutou in 2004 and which became the 25
26 basis for planning the architecture, the exhibitions and the different spaces of the 26
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27 museum. It was for this programme that I developed the notion of the museum 27
28 without objects – neither a virtual museum nor a museum of images and sounds, 28
29 but a museum that would not be founded on a collection of objects, where the 29
30 objects would be one element among others, where the absence of material objects 30
31 through which to visualise the lives of the oppressed, the migrants, the marginal, 31
would be confronted. We would not seek to fill up a void, to compensate for the
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32 32
33 absence, we would work from the absence, embracing it fully, for we understood 33
34 that this absence was paradoxically affirming a presence. To us, the accumulation 34
35 of objects destined to celebrate the wealth of a nation belonged to an economy of 35
36 predation, looting defeated peoples or exploiting the riches of others. It belonged 36
37 to an economy of consumption that invested the object with narcissistic meaning, 37
38 making visible one’s identity and social status. We turned to small objects, objets 38
39 de rien, devoid of economic value in the market economy – objects that had a 39
40 biography and had travelled. 40
41 41
42 1  I worked on the project during 2000–2010, by participating in seminars and meetings 42
43 of artists, museum professionals, curators, heritage specialists and scholars organised by the 43
44 Regional Council, and by directing the MCUR team in 2003. 44

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 26 The Postcolonial Museum

1 In recent decades, a vast and diverse literature has been produced on the 1
2 museum. We benefited greatly from this debate, though most contributions were 2
3 critical appraisals of projects and few were written by people who had built a 3
4 museum and who openly discussed the problems raised by building a postcolonial 4
5 museum. The dominant position was how to create a museum with the Western 5
6 museum as a counter-example. The Western model remained the reference. We 6
7 wanted to question the logic both of inversion and of catching up. Both could 7
8 reinforce the hegemonic position of the West. Could we take the Western model 8
9 as one among others, neither imitating it nor fully rejecting it? Could we take it 9
10 as a proposition that could be mixed with others, playing freely with its modes of 10
11 presentation? We also benefited from our encounters with museum professionals 11
12 we met in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. We learned a lot from the 12
13 conversation we had following the presentation of the project at colloquiums in 13

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14 Japan, the USA, Italy, France, Germany, India and South Africa, as well as from 14
15 our visits to museums. But our first reference was the people of Réunion to whom 15
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we presented the project as it moved along. We discussed it with local artists and
with cultural associations. We tested our choices during the cultural manifestations
we organised: the annual ceremony honouring Zarboutan Nout Kiltir, women and
men who had safeguarded and developed vernacular knowledge and practices, the
series of conferences with international scholars on the history and culture of the
Indian Ocean and on contemporary issues – climate, economy, geopolitics, the work
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22 we did with schools, the seminars we put together, the meetings with our Scientific 22
23 Council – Marc Augé, Achille Mbembe, Simon Njami and Germain Viatte, the 23
24 work we did with the architects Anouk Legendre and Nicolas Démazières, whose 24
25 project had been chosen following an international competition, and with the team 25
26 which was developing the permanent exhibition.2 26
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28 28
29 What Kind of Museum? 29
30 30
31 In France, museums are top-down affairs. Whether private or public, they are a fait 31
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32 du prince. The polemics and controversies surrounding the building of I.M. Pei’s 32
33 pyramids for the Louvre, the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration and the 33
34 Musée du quai Branly did not stop their completion. They were projects carried 34
35 out by a President of the French Republic, who remained in power long enough 35
36 to see their opening, ensuring they received the financial, administrative and 36
37 political support they required. The MCUR project was a regional affair, and as 37
38 such it sought to work with the local terrain. Seminars were organised with artists, 38
39 associations and researchers in 2000–2001. What emerged from these meetings 39
40 was a conception of the island’s history divided into ethno-cultural chapters. The 40
41 participants, who had all been educated through the French system, imagined a 41
42 42
43 2 A description of the project is available at http://www.x-tu.com/ (accessed 10 March 43
44 2013). 44

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 A Museum Without Objects 27

1 succession of ‘houses’: ‘House of Africa’, ‘House of India’, ‘House of China’ 1

2 and ‘Creole House’. What was remarkable was the absence of France, whose role 2
3 could not be ignored, and of Madagascar, often forgotten. The narrative was one 3
4 of linear progress, from slavery to integration within the French Republic. There 4
5 was much talk about ‘identity’ and safeguarding ‘tradition’. The ways in which the 5
6 restaurant was imagined embodied the idea of creolisation as offering a series of 6
7 coexisting forms: a buffet with ‘Indian’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Creole’ food. The team in 7
8 charge of turning the conclusions of the seminars into a programme proposed to 8
9 follow the timeline of French colonisation through a series of chapters that would 9
10 visualise the transformations of Réunion society with regard to events in France. 10
11 During these seminars, we measured the weight of the French policies 11
12 of assimilation. A few of us defended an approach designed to emancipate 12
13 the island’s history from the temporality and spatiality imposed by French 13

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14 colonialism. We suggested that Réunion’s history was the history of the 14
15 unexpected (Creole language and culture), of the intangible, of sorrows and 15
16 struggles. Few objects had survived that would testify for the lives of women 16
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and men brought to the island since 1663. Official history did not record their
lives. To recover this past, we had first to acknowledge an absence, an unknown
past. To Walter Benjamin, the recovery of the unknown past – ‘the awakening
of a not-yet-conscious knowledge of what has been’ (Benjamin 1999, 458) – is
the battlefield where the future is decided. What would produce a shifting of
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22 the gaze, what small displacement would open up new vistas? The map drawn 22
23 by the Arab geographer Abu Abdullah Ibn Idrisi in the eleventh century was an 23
24 inspiration. In accordance with Arab convention, the north was at the bottom 24
25 of the map and the south at the top. This convention transformed the ways in 25
26 which French schooling has imposed the cartography of the world; as a device, 26
27 it helped us suggest that, living in an island on an African–Asian axis, we could 27
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28 question the notions of North, South, West and East. 28

29 Where did we start? With the island, with the physical territory: an active 29
30 volcano, a small island on an African–Asian axis. It was known to Arab navigators, 30
31 identified by the Portuguese in the seventeenth century as a place to replenish 31
32 ships with fresh water. It became a colony by accident in 1663. The French were 32
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33 looking for a port of call on their journeys to India. They were unable to conquer 33
34 Madagascar, but there were two islands without a native population, offering 34
35 fresh water, great forests, and one of them natural harbours, so the French took 35
36 possession of these. They were called Bourbon (present-day Réunion) and Île de 36
37 France (Mauritius). The latter had been abandoned six years earlier by the Dutch, 37
38 who had colonised the island following a decision taken by the directors of the 38
39 Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie – VOC) in 39
40 1637. But in 1657 the company decided to dismantle Mauritius’s garrison and 40
41 abandon the island. The country was no longer viable. No precious metals had 41
42 been found in its soil, and the ebony forests were almost completely depleted. 42
43 The French took over, and soon populated both islands with settlers and enslaved 43
44 labour from Madagascar and Africa. France ‘lost’ the colony of Mauritius in 1815. 44

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 28 The Postcolonial Museum

1 In Réunion, slavery was abolished in 1848: out of a population of 100,000, some 1

2 60,000 were enslaved. They became citizens, but remained under colonial status, 2
3 which was abolished in 1946 when it became a French department. 3
4 After 1946, local struggles for social equality led to the emergence of a middle 4
5 class. Four generations have had access to education. The development of public 5
6 services offered jobs to the children of people who had often been poor. Since in 6
7 the overseas departments all civil servants benefit from privileges inherited from 7
8 colonial times – higher salaries and lower taxes than in France for the same jobs, 8
9 as well as other important benefits inherited from colonialism – private property 9
10 and other forms of consumption became accessible. Consumption and assimilation 10
11 to whatever was fantasised as ‘being like the French’ were now the goals of the 11
12 middle class. Within a few decades, the island went from being dominated by 12
13 an economy inherited from the plantation economy where sugar cane reigned 13

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14 supreme to an economy of services with an unemployment rate of 36.5 per cent 14
15 (the female rate was nearly five points higher than the male rate), and with 60.8 15
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per cent of under-twenties being unemployed. Exports were less than 10 per
cent of imports. The population tripled while the economy crumbled. The rate of
unemployment has stayed around 37 per cent for decades (60 per cent among the
young); 21 per cent of the population is illiterate; the island imports more than 3
million tons of goods from France and exports 300,000 tons, mostly of sugar. It is
highly dependent on France; more than 50 per cent of the population live below
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22 the poverty line (800 euros per month in an island where the cost of living is equal 22
23 to that of Paris, the most expensive city in France). People travel abroad more 23
24 and more, and an important middle class has emerged which sends its children to 24
25 universities in France and elsewhere. Few graduates want to come back. The signs 25
26 of the politics and culture of consumption abound: commercial malls, cars, cell 26
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27 phones; the island has its own celebrities, its own gossip, its own social networks, 27
28 its own private radios. Many worlds cohabit, often blind and deaf to each other. 28
29 New cultural identities have been reclaiming the colonial categories to 29
30 transform, subvert and modify them to their own ends. These new identities serve 30
31 to diversify the nomenclature of society by calling for a unique origin and a special 31
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32 place in the historical narratives of Réunion Island and its contemporary society. 32
33 To be of African (Kaf), Indian (Malbar), Chinese (Sinwa) or European (Pti Blanc) 33
34 descent takes on a new dimension, with each ethnic group laying claim to its own 34
35 history as part of Réunionese history, recalling the impact of slavery and of the 35
36 colonial orders in their lives. 36
37 37
38 38
39 The Object of the Intangible 39
40 40
41 The history and culture of the vanquished and the oppressed is rarely embodied in 41
42 material objects. They bequeath words rather than palaces, hope rather than private 42
43 property, words, texts and music rather than monuments. They leave heritages 43
44 embodied in people rather than stones. Songs, words, poems, declarations, texts 44

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 A Museum Without Objects 29

1 often constitute the archive through which to evoke their past. Their itineraries 1
2 retrace the history of struggles, of migrations, of the global organisation of the 2
3 workforce rather than the accumulation of wealth. It is a world of the intangible, 3
4 of the unexpected, of what has been untimely, sorrowful, hopeful. 4
5 The ideological fabrication of the noticeable and unnoticeable, of the visible 5
6 and the invisible, of what matters and does not matter, obeys rules and laws that 6
7 are constantly being elaborated, reconfigured, deconstructed, reconstructed. 7
8 Narratives become significant when they enter a field of recognition, constructed 8
9 through a series of legitimised gestures (grants, works by ‘recognised’ authors, 9
10 conferences, construction of a vocabulary that acquires prestige and wide currency 10
11 – such as hybridity, in-between, creolisation). Marginalised groups have always 11
12 understood the importance of making their vision of the world, rituals, traditions, 12
13 practices, noticeable. Scholars have explored the processes whereby continents, 13

y
14 regions, practices, groups are ‘discovered’, questioning the very notion of 14
15 discovery in the humanities and social sciences. What is discovered? What makes 15
16 the gesture of unmasking, unveiling so attractive? Can we read in the continuous 16
17
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21
‘race for theory’.
op
use of the notion of ‘unmasking’ the desire to unveil a ‘true core’? What can we
learn from the representation of the explorer? The gesture of ‘discovery’ remains
a potent trope and has gained new value in what Barbara Christian has called the

Hence we asked how practices and processes that belonged for the most part to
17
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21
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22 ‘immaterial’ or ‘intangible’ culture could be expressed visually without falling into 22
23 a reductive ethnology. How could the maps of exchanges, contacts and conflicts in 23
24 the Indoceanic world, where seven worlds converged (African, Chinese, European, 24
25 Indian, Muslim, and Malagasy and Comorian), render the contact zones, the 25
26 cultural interactions, the modes of interpenetration, diffusion, dissemination and 26
27 dispersion? How could the processes and practices of creolisation at work in the 27
oo

28 creation of Réunionese unity be expressed visually? How could yesterday’s routes 28

29 of slavery and indentured labour and today’s migrations, power relationships, 29
30 inequalities, discriminations be depicted, concurrently with the resistances, 30
31 struggles and collective imaginations? How could we make the museum a space 31
32 of discussion open to reinterpretations, to local and global transformations? 32
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33 The study of Réunionese society has all too often been reduced to drawing up a 33
34 chronological order that arranges interlocking temporalities, neglecting singularity 34
35 in favour of generality, repeating the eternal opposition between elite culture and 35
36 popular culture, between written and oral, between reality and representations. 36
37 One of our aims was the critical contextualising and transmission of Réunionese 37
38 culture that, we insist, is outstanding for its intercultural character. We did not 38
39 want to merely safeguard the heritage; naturally, the desire and need to preserve 39
40 are justified, but we did not want this to rule our thinking. 40
41 We wanted to call attention to the contingencies, the accidents of history, 41
42 challenging the fiction of a linear course presented as inevitably progressive, 42
43 marked by a modernism defined by Europe in which every event could be 43
44 explained by a structuring causality. We used ‘Europe’ to designate a historical 44

Chambers.indb 29 11/22/2013 10:35:27 AM

 30 The Postcolonial Museum

1 and cultural construction that can be better seen from the colonial world but which 1
2 has had consequences on the Continent itself. To us, the museum was not a space 2
3 for dead cultures, pretending to represent ‘truth’ or marketing itself as ‘heritage’ 3
4 sites and theme parks; it would be a space for social change, a transformative 4
5 space where stereotypes were countered and alternative narratives suggested and 5
6 discussed. We had to invent a space that did not fossilise history or memory, that 6
7 remained open toward revisions and reinterpretations, that showed creolisation 7
8 processes and practices while restoring the spaces and histories that led up to this 8
9 creolisation. The spirit was that of a nonlinear interpretation where the viewer 9
10 would be invited to ‘dialogue’ with what she saw, where she would be able to 10
11 suggest other meanings for things and events. 11
12 The MCUR was designed to reflect on the issues of a museum of the present 12
13 time, a space that would display episodes where violence, brutality and poverty 13

y
14 prevail, without becoming a space of expiation. We had few examples of visual 14
15 representation of Réunion’s culture and history to examine, analyse, counter 15
16
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or challenge. Réunion’s culture did not even belong to the infamous genre of 16
‘primitivism’. At colonial exhibitions, the island’s culture and history were shown 17
through goods (sugar, coffee) or through the Creole art de vivre, an imagined gentle 18
way of life in the colony, masking its brutality. French universalism invented an 19
abstract aesthetics to refigure the empire, which concealed the social and historical 20
context. Rather than looking at what had been done, we concluded that it was by 21
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21
22 starting from the present that another future could be imagined. 22
23 23
24 24
25 The Economy of the Museum 25
26 26
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27 We have no oil, diamonds, uranium. We have no palaces, statues, great works 27

28 of art. We said that Réunion’s economy is fragile and there are important 28
29 inequalities. We did not want to live beyond our means. We shared the criticism 29
30 of an economy of squandering and wastefulness geared towards the destruction 30
31 of local economies of vernacular culture as ‘ethnic chic’. It would be absurd 31
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32 to build a space that would prove too expensive; it would be pure madness. In 32
33 fifteen, twenty years, on what economy would the project rest? If we turned 33
34 to multimedia techniques, was it necessary to dazzle the visitor with high 34
35 technology, or was it better to mix bits of high technology with bricolage, 35
36 to have an economy of recycling and recuperation? A reflection on economy 36
37 proved inseparable from our reflection on content. 37
38 The economy of the MCUR rested on a reflection of the island’s economy seen 38
39 in relation to its environment and the ways in which inequalities had been widening 39
40 throughout the world and the region. We had to confront the logic of catching up, 40
41 with its vocabulary that stemmed from anti-colonial struggles and the discourse 41
42 of progress. They were based on an acknowledgment of the wretched condition 42
43 of the infrastructures, non-application of labour legislation, extremely brutal 43
44 employers, racist schools and churches, malnutrition. In 1946, the anti-colonial 44

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 A Museum Without Objects 31

1 Left denounced the state of neglect of the population and the rule of the colonial 1
2 oligarchy and its henchmen during the debate on the end of the colonial status 2
3 at the National Assembly. Equality was the key notion in the struggle for social 3
4 and political emancipation. This notion, drawn from the Enlightenment and the 4
5 French Revolution, assumed a special dimension in the colonies where inequality 5
6 was an organisational principle based on race. The demand for emancipation was 6
7 a demand for social equality (application of the social and labour legislation) and 7
8 for civil rights (the end of electoral fraud, of censorship and repression). It went 8
9 hand in hand with a demand to catch up, and the anti-colonial movement was the 9
10 first to emphasise its urgency. In the 1960s, under pressure from unrest, the state 10
11 adopted and adapted the expression ‘catching up’. Since then, that notion and its 11
12 representations have become the framework and central issue of public discussion. 12
13 The economy of making up for lost time met several demands – of the state, of 13

y
14 elected representatives, of the population. In just a few years, ‘providing’ became 14
15 the key issue. The gap between the different worlds in Réunion – the haves and 15
16 have-nots, those who have a permanent job and those who have a temporary one, 16
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those who work and those who do not – the legacy of a colonial system, a deeply
unequal development, all this legitimised a policy of ‘catching up’. But the notion
has also imposed a rhetoric of urgency within the economy of consumption.
The goal of the MCUR was not to begin by searching for lost origins, trying
to restore an imaginary authenticity, to defend a nostalgia that ‘things used to be
17
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22 better’. We claimed that there was nothing in our heritages, no matter how painful 22
23 they were, that gave us the right to claim a moral superiority. What should be 23
24 preserved? How? Why? Confronted with heritage, one often has an impulse to 24
25 preserve, reassert, defend – that is, to preserve from forgetfulness, from denial, 25
26 from the policies of silence and amnesia set up by the authorities who seek to 26
27 impose one story, one tradition; to reassert what happened; to defend heritages 27
oo

28 because they gave rise to stories, myths, because they constitute landmarks 28
29 that we need. But we also need to choose, because not everything is worth 29
30 preserving, because we have to preserve and reassert, but without melancholy, 30
31 without nostalgia. We have to reinterpret our heritages, subject them to a critical 31
32 appraisal, so that something new can happen – that is, history. Rather than be 32
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33 victims of our heritage, we have to reclaim it from a critical position and be able 33
34 to pass it on. We have to give meaning to our heritages, to be active heirs, because 34
35 to quote René Char, ‘no testament precedes our heritage’. 35
36 But why use the term ‘museum’? Usually, cultural centres are for the ‘South’, 36
37 museums for the ‘North’. We wanted to break this dichotomy and suggest that a 37
38 new kind of museum was possible, and that a small island was capable of doing it. 38
39 The reappropriation of the term was for us a political gesture. The colonised and 39
40 the oppressed have always seized what the West invented, to transform and adapt 40
41 it. When it is blind imitation, it leads to tragic consequences, but when it is done to 41
42 engage critically with the tools, it can be inventive and creative. I remember Aimé 42
43 Césaire telling me that it is important to grasp all the tools available to transform 43
44 the world. Telling Réunion people that they deserved a museum with all the elitist 44

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 32 The Postcolonial Museum

1 representations associated with this space was a very important gesture: ‘Yes, your 1
2 “poor” lives deserve a museum, your creations and practices deserve a museum.’ 2
3 Some people opposed to the project understood it intuitively when they claimed 3
4 that there was nothing in Réunion that could justify a museum, no culture worthy 4
5 of such space. 5
6 6
7 7
8 A Museum without Objects 8
9 9
10 We considered the archive not as a talisman or a fetish, but as a document. The 10
11 archive is meaningful in its context, it is not ‘truth’, it belongs to an entire social 11
12 environment. Thus the notarised deed of the sale of a slave is meaningful when it 12
13 is placed in a social and historical framework; the deed itself is merely a notarised 13

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14 deed. The Code Noir (‘Black Code’) has to be presented in a context where the 14
15 foundations of law in France and Europe are explained, and put in perspective 15
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with other codes regulating slavery. It must not become a ‘sacred’ text that cannot
be discussed, but a testimonial to specific laws, on the justification of exclusion.
Rather than looking for the lost object, trying to fill a gap, we started with
the following challenge: if there are no objects, how do we imagine a museum
without objects? The object could not be central to the MCUR. We knew how
important it has been for non-Western countries to impose a new reading so
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21
22 that objects (African masks, Inuit sculptures, Aborigines’ paintings) were seen 22
23 as legitimate as a sculpture or painting by a European artist. The importance of 23
24 that movement is still being tested. Yet we thought it was better to start with 24
25 an accepted absence. No vernacular object before 1848 has survived, and we 25
26 wish to underline that: there was no collection of testimonies of slaves after the 26
oo

27 abolition of slavery. No one (emancipated slaves, abolitionists, writers) thought 27

28 of collecting oral testimonies of the freed slaves. The desire to forget and a 28
29 policy of silence prevailed. 29
30 Starting from an absence led to revisiting the notion of the object and then 30
31 integrating what exists – the memory of the object, its reconstruction – within that 31
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32 approach. Thus the object was treated as a trace whose meaning emerges from 32
33 a landscape, whether social, literary, imaginary, musical or whatever. We were 33
34 not partisans of the sacralisation of the object as the authentic marker of human 34
35 action. We thought that violence and resistance, passions and interest had also to 35
36 be shown through sounds, images, plays, narratives. The object was a tool among 36
37 others, and it did not have to be authentic. When the Portuguese entered the Indian 37
38 Ocean in 1498, they brought with them the violence of the brutal religious wars 38
39 in Europe. Negotiation was not an option. Peoples construed as enemies had to 39
40 be crushed, massacred, destroyed. The Portuguese imposed their monopoly on 40
41 trade in an ocean where free mercantile capitalism was the rule. How could we 41
42 show that moment? The object was not the only reference; we worked from an 42
43 installation of sounds, images, objects and acting to evoke a moment. 43
44 44

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 A Museum Without Objects 33

1 The Creole language was to have a major role in the MCUR as an itinerary 1
2 of a constantly vivified archive. It is a vector of knowledge about practices and 2
3 people’s imaginations. It is the space of a common heritage constantly enriched by 3
4 practices and contributions. In the very heterogeneity presiding over its formation, 4
5 the Creole language necessarily bears the stamp of the languages, dreams, 5
6 imaginations that presided over its birth – unconscious, underground, cryptic. But 6
7 one way or another, it surfaces in the everyday speech of exchange, in poetic 7
8 speech, in the texts of the ségas and the maloyas, proverbs, puns, riddles. It does 8
9 indeed surface, but altered by encounters that shape the image of the place; it 9
10 surfaces in crossings and appropriations. A legend, ‘Granmer Kal’, was developed 10
11 by blending myths from India, Madagascar, Africa, with the ongoing and changing 11
12 popular oral traditions. This memory is linked to the slaves’ fear of the master and 12
13 his powers, a specific perception of the supernatural. 13

y
14 Immaterial culture could not be limited to memory or tradition. Along 14
15 with past practices, it was important to take in new ones like hip-hop, rap, 15
16 contemporary dance and so on, the transformation of older existing practices 16
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(christenings, wakes, weddings, carnival) and the creolisation of imported
practices (table manners, French cuisine, world music). We chose the path as the
metaphor of exile that crosses routes of trade and empire. It evokes the trails of
the maroons and their resistance, the appropriation of the territory by the trails of
fishermen, farmhands, market women, vagabonds. These paths and trails outlined
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22 another cartography, another archive of the island. The path drew the ancestor’s 22
23 course: the one leading from him to us and the one leading us back to him. The 23
24 display of the itineraries of persons, objects, rites, culinary practices, ingredients 24
25 of recipes, of sounds, show the routes of multiple levels of culture. Reality is 25
26 polymorphic, formed by multiple identities and constant metamorphoses. From 26
27 the place of origin, whence the ancestor came, to the world she contributed to 27
oo

28 build and bequeathed to us, the itinerary brings back a life. The richness of a 28
29 world is restored, and the neutral category (‘Slave’, ‘engagé’, ‘Kaf’, ‘Malbar’, 29
30 ‘Muslim’), one that negates singularity (How old? What gender? What place of 30
31 origin: city, country, coast?), fades away before the combined individual and 31
32 collective experience that shaped the Réunionese world. 32
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33 The Museum Without Objects would have been a space where other cartographies 33
34 of the world could have been evoked, other futures imagined. Réunion’s history 34
35 emerged within the history of the organisation of a racialised workforce on a global 35
36 scale, within the history of rivalries among European powers to grab the riches of 36
37 the world, but also within the history of South–South exchanges of the Indoceanic 37
38 world and its dynamics. Thus, temporality and spatiality were those of the millenary 38
39 space of the Indoceanic world. We did not idealise this world: by inscribing Réunion 39
40 within that space, we wanted to unmask the lie of European cartography, to question 40
41 the fact that the only meaningful link of the island with the world was the link to 41
42 France. We wanted to remind Réunion society of its environment. By inscribing the 42
43 island within the long history of the organisation of the workforce and exploitation, 43
44 we wanted to denationalise the history of colonialism. 44

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 34 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Going back to the history of labour and looking at the figure of the body as 1
2 a commodity to exchange, sell, exploit, own and kill (colonial slavery, forced 2
3 labour, indentured work) meant examining the predatory economy. It was an 3
4 economy based on the raw exploitation of resources (human and others) that linked 4
5 networks – financial, cultural, political – across borders. The predatory economy 5
6 fabricated people who did not matter. It had a destructive force which in order to 6
7 be constrained must meet an organised counter-force. As Machiavelli wrote, it is 7
8 an illusion to believe that those who dominate would ever be satisfied with what 8
9 they own, that their superiority warrants wisdom. The avidity of the powerful is 9
10 limitless, and is only contained by the resistance of others. It was an economy 10
11 whose ‘processes inevitably interact with systems for the governance of national 11
12 economies’ (Sassen 1999, 214). It constructed a ‘transnational geography of 12
13 centrality consisting of multiple linkages and strategic concentrations of material 13

y
14 infrastructures’ (Sassen 1999, 214). 14
15 We were wary of a narrative that situated slavery and postcolonial status 15
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in a foreclosed past ignoring its contemporary traces. The narrative of linear
progress contained in the abstract rhetoric of human rights that had prevailed in
the discourse of French abolitionism and paternalistic republicanism was cutting
Réunion off from the history of regional emancipation, from the circulation of
revolutionary ideas. It reinforced Réunion’s dependency on France: all that
was meaningful and progressive had come from France. Yet, by looking at
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22 the ways in which Réunion had featured on the map of a predatory economy, 22
23 the island’s history was no longer contained within the narrow borders of the 23
24 French national narrative. A cartography of South–South struggles, circulations, 24
25 migrations and movements of goods, ideas, beliefs would inscribe the island 25
26 within complex networks. Further, a reflection on the predatory economy would 26
oo

27 lead to an exploration of the culture of terror and a rhetoric of protection from 27

28 barbarism that seeks to humanise what cannot be humanised. When a predatory 28
29 economy sets up rules of protection, they are put in place to enforce submission: 29
30 the protégé always lives by the rules imposed by its protector. The protégé must 30
31 insist on its victimisation and embody powerlessness. In Inhuman Conditions 31
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32 (2007), Pheng Cheah has analysed how the discourse of human rights follows 32
33 that logic and seeks thus to ‘humanise’ what cannot be humanised: capitalist 33
34 exploitation. Human rights do not seem to offer the grounds for conceiving of a 34
35 new humanism. 35
36 Concretely, these remarks meant that, rather than start in 1663 when the French 36
37 took possession of the island, Réunionese history would stretch back to the fifth 37
38 century AD, when the Indian Ocean became a cultural and commercial space linking 38
39 cities along the eastern coast of Africa with the Arabic Peninsula, India, Indonesia 39
40 and China; that its space would be the Indian Ocean; that the lives of the poor, 40
41 settlers, enslaved, indentured, migrants would be evoked; that the languages that 41
42 had been spoken on the island throughout its history would be heard – Malagasy, 42
43 Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Bantu, Shigazinge, Chinese, seventeenth-century 43
44 French; that ideas that had sprung up here – republicanism, fascism, communism, 44

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 A Museum Without Objects 35

1 anti-colonialism, and politics of assimilation – would be explored; that the library 1

2 would be dedicated to poetry; that spaces for oral exchange would be integrated 2
3 within the visit; that silence and meditation, looking at clouds, at the ocean would 3
4 be possible, but also noise and laughter; that plants and ‘Nature’ would be taken 4
5 as actors of history; that part of the garden would be left to the care of visitors; 5
6 that there would be workshops on video and films so that the Réunionese would 6
7 develop their own visual culture; that the permanent exhibition would conclude 7
8 with ‘Réunion in the present’, where visitors would construct the ever-changing 8
9 present. The object of the museum was the moment of encounter, of exchange and 9
10 conflict. It required mobilising the ‘necessary intellectual and existential resources 10
11 enabling us to confront the indescribable agony and unnameable anguish’ (West 11
12 1997, 56) that has been unleashed on the world. 12
13 13

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14 14
15 The Notion of Creolisation 15
16 16
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Heterogeneity and unpredictability characterise the process of creolisation. For
Edouard Glissant, ‘creolization requires that heterogeneous elements that are put
into contact enhance each other, that there is no degradation or diminishing of the
being in the contact and mixing’ (Glissant 1996, 18; my translation). Creolisation
occurred in a situation of deep constraints, under the yoke of slavery, colonialism
17
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22 and racism, involving deep inequalities, forced circumstances and survival 22
23 strategies. Outside the United States, slaves were largely men – data show that 23
24 cargoes of slaves generally amounted to two-thirds men and one-third women.3 24
25 Creolisation was the creation of a world of men, of a majority of men enslaved by 25
26 a minority of men. These elements – deportation, forced exile, a world of men, a 26
27 deeply unequal and violent society, institutionalised racial hierarchy – contributed 27
oo

28 to the creation of Creole worlds: plural, since no Creole society is exactly similar 28
29 to another. Creolisation was an unexpected, unpredictable consequence of the 29
30 colonial slave trade and slavery. It was not a return to ‘roots’, a re-creation of 30
31 a lost world, but a creation. As an expression of groups who experienced brutal 31
32 exploitation, creolisation reflects an ethos of resistance. Creolisation can thus 32
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33 become ‘a tool capable of challenging nationalist projects, forging a more supple 33

34 theory of non-essentialist identity formation and transnational belonging’ (Ahmed 34
35 et al. 2003, 279). If the outcomes of creolisation are unforeseeable and if current 35
36 contacts could be said to lead to processes of creolisation, one must be aware that 36
37 creolisation is not the only foreseeable outcome of a contact zone. 37
38 38
39 39
3 On the ratio of men to women among the enslaved in the Transatlantic and Indian
40 40
Ocean trade, see Bush (1990) and Morrissey (1989). Roughly one African woman was
41 carried across the Atlantic for every two men. European slave traders preferred to buy men. 41
42 The captains of slave ships were usually instructed to buy as high a proportion of men 42
43 as they could, because men could be sold for more in the Americas. On the situation in 43
44 Réunion, see Vergès (2006). 44

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 36 The Postcolonial Museum

1 In March 2009, in response to the largest social mobilisation in the French 1

2 Caribbean, Edouard Glissant et al. published Manifeste pour les ‘produits’ de 2
3 haute nécessité (‘Manifesto for the “Products” of High Necessity’), arguing 3
4 that the legitimate demand for better purchasing power could not be understood 4
5 without an articulation with a new poetics. Their title mirrored the unions’ demand 5
6 that the government fix the price of the products deemed highly necessary for 6
7 day-to-day life – oil, rice, bread – and intervene if distributors exceed the fixed 7
8 price. The authors declared that besides the ‘necessary products of living’ (les 8
9 produits de première nécessité), there were other products of high necessity that 9
10 appeared just as important: political responsibility, criticism of the free market, a 10
11 radical contestation of contemporary capitalism, rethinking work as a place for 11
12 self-accomplishment and social invention (Breleur et al. 2009). If the amount of 12
13 despair and resentment among the populations of the Antilles was underestimated, 13

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14 the hopes of intellectuals and activists were also hindered by social and economic 14
15 reality. To Patrick Chamoiseau, the ambivalence of this ‘post-capitalist movement’ 15
16
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lay in the tension between the illusion that consumption gives meaning to life and 16
the desire to go beyond consumption as giving meaning (Chamoiseau 2011, 155). 17
The poetics deployed with chants, dance, gestures, reactivation of tradition, were 18
the expressions of a fraternity, of an aspiration for new relations on the island and 19
between the island and France that did not find a place within the social movement. 20
There were many obstacles to a radical movement. Chamoiseau argued that there 21
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21
22 had not been enough engagement by local intellectuals, too much cowardice, a 22
23 lack of democratic culture inherited from slavery and the fear of a future without 23
24 France (Chamoiseau 2011, 173). 24
25 It is important to bring back the slave as a political figure – not just as the figure 25
26 of suffering, exile, deportation, but as a figure that radically contests with ‘his’ life 26
oo

27 an economic, cultural and political system that fabricates fragile and precarious lives 27
28 for profit. If the plantation, as Glissant reminds us, is the womb of creolisation, we 28
29 need to bring back the plantation as a site of economic and political power. The 29
30 slaves challenged an economy based on a geopolitics of brutal exploitation, on the 30
31 transformation of the human body into a mere object, on laws and regulations that 31
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32 justified the racialisation of work, that gave a minority the right to punish, maim 32
33 and torture enslaved women and men. Creolised expressions and practices radically 33
34 questioned a world which sought to organise society according to rigid and fixed 34
35 identities based on skin colour. It showed the capacity of the oppressed to create 35
36 meaning in intra-cultural exchanges. We uncritically adopted the narrative of loss of 36
37 native languages, of creolisation as a hegemonic process through which every one 37
38 would become ‘Réunionese’. The publication in 2009 of research by Pier Larson 38
39 deeply challenged this approach. Larson questioned the ways in which creolisation 39
40 has been seen in the Indian Ocean. African and Malagasy slaves did not look to 40
41 ‘sociocultural integration into the societies of their forced migration’, but rather 41
42 sought to maintain ‘separated identities’, he convincingly argues (Larson 2009, 42
43 19). The emphasis on ‘hybridity and cultural mixing has marginalised the ancestral 43
44 languages of “enslaved persons” from colonial histories’ (Larson 2009, 19). Larson 44

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 A Museum Without Objects 37

1 insists on the ‘simultaneous processes of ethnic distinction’ and creolisation

1
2 because ‘Francophone créolité and Malagasy identity were entangled in each other,
2
3 sometimes mutually constituting’ (Larson 2009, 19). 3
4 The longest social mobilisation in the French overseas departments in 2009,
4
5 the end of the museum project, the increasing emergence of ‘Blackness’ in 5
6 hexagonal France, the entry of Aimé Césaire into the Pantheon, the debate on6
7 national identity, led me to explore anew the notion of creolisation. I concluded
7
8 that creolisation was a subversive concept if it remained linked to the subterranean
8
9 struggle and resistance of populations confronted with brutal and raw power, with
9
10 monolingualism and monoculturalism. Creolisation must enhance vernacular 10
11 practices and solidarity among the oppressed. Its roots in slavery and plantation
11
12 economies imply an ethics of responsibility for fragile lives, seeking common
12
13 ground. Creolisation means inventing new forms of radical subaltern heterogeneity,
13

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14 undermining the hegemonic space from within; not a nativist nostalgia, but a
14
15 radical critical position and practice; no mere cultural translation, but political
15
16 practices and movements. Beyond the emptiness of declarations about the 16
17
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values of multiculturalism, a form of soft management of diversity, creolisation
17
can lead to the invention of a new radicalism, whose inspiration could be found
18
in subversive anti-slavery politics. This is what was lost in Réunion when the
19
petty bourgeoisie chose the current form of French assimilation, allowing for an
20
expression of regional culture in so far as it does not challenge the superiority of
21
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22 French language and culture. 22
23 At the dawn of the nineteenth century, in a Europe undergoing massive upheaval,
23
24 the German poet Hölderlin pondered the question, ‘Why poets in times of distress?’
24
25 Today, we may reformulate the question, and ask, ‘Why culture in times of distress?’
25
26 The MCUR was deemed useless and unnecessary, a waste of money when housing 26
27 and jobs were urgently needed. Even though no money has been invested in housing
27
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28 or jobs since 2010, the argument was powerful. It described the museum project
28
29 as elitist and egotistic; the project was also derided for its idea of being a museum
29
30 without objects. What was the point? We were accused of being ‘intellectuals’, unable
30
31 to comprehend the ‘people’, lost in our narcissistic dreams. Were our propositions
31
32 merely rhetorical claims devoid of pragmatism, mere intellectual reveries? 32
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33 We thought that the hegemony of economic discourse, the hegemony of ideas

33
34 inspired by Ayn Rand’s belief in the superiority of the individual, was destructive
34
35 and had to be countered by a space where the intensity of mutations that Réunion
35
36 had experienced over four decades and the changes produced in the world by an
36
37 economy that posited infinite resources, by the belief in endless progress and in the
37
38 total domination of man over the environment, would be questioned. 38
39 39
40 40
41 References 41
42 42
43 Ahmed, Sara, Claudia Castaneda, Anne-Marie Fortier and Mimi Sheller. 2003. 43
44 Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration. Oxford: Berg. 44

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 38 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Benjamin, Walter. 1999. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and 1
2 Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2
3 Breleur, Ernest, Patrick Chamoiseau, Serge Domi, Gérard Delver, Édouard 3
4 Glissant, Guillaume Pigeard de Gurbert, Olivier Portecop, Olivier Pulvar and 4
5 Jean-Claude William. 2009. Manifeste pour les ‘produits’ de haute nécessité. 5
6 Paris: Institut du Tout-Monde, Éditions Galaade. 6
7 Bush, Barbara. 1990. Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650–1838. Bloomington, 7
8 IN: Indiana University Press. 8
9 Chamoiseau, Patrick. 2011. ‘Il faudrait dire: les “temps impensables” ou “les 9
10 temps de la relation”’. Les Temps Modernes 662–3: 154–88. 10
11 Cheah, Pheng. 2007. Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human 11
12 Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 12
13 Glissant, Edouard. 1996. Introduction à une poétique du divers. Paris: Gallimard. 13

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14 Larson, Pier M. 2009. Ocean of Letters: Language and Creolization in an Indian 14
15 Ocean Diaspora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 15
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Morrissey, Marietta. 1989. Slave Women in the New World: Gender Stratification
in the Caribbean. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Sassen, Saskia. 1999. Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New
Mobility of People and Money. New York: The New Press.
Vergès, Françoise. 2006. ‘L’énigme d’une disparition’. In Racines et itineraires de
l’identité réunionnaise, edited by Françoise Vergès and Carpanin Marimoutou.
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22 Saint-André: Océan Editions, 78–105. 22
23 West, Cornel. 1997. ‘Black Striving in a Twilight Civilization’. In The Future of 23
24 the Race, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr and Cornel West. New York: Vintage 24
25 Books, 53–114. 25
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 1 Chapter 2 1
2 2
3 Decolonising National Museums of 3
4 4
5 Ethnography in Europe: Exposing and 5
6 6
7 Reshaping Colonial Heritage (2000–2012) 7
8 8
9 Felicity Bodenstein and Camilla Pagani 9
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13 13

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14 The postcolonial turn has been accompanied by the claims of cultural minorities 14
15 for identity recognition all around the world, subjecting ethnography museums to 15
new critical perspectives in terms of their goals and roles (Mauzé and Rostkowski
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2007). Hence, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, several museums have
taken different paths towards postcoloniality (Lebovics 2007) adopting a range of
strategies with the aim of cancelling out, neutralising or indeed critically exposing
colonial roots – it is this last option that we will consider here in its widest sense.
Undeniably, since the late 1980s, a wave of refurbishments, new displays,
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22 message renovations, name modifications, new foundations, relocations and so 22
23 forth has to a large extent reshaped the ethnography museum landscape in Europe. 23
24 In attempting to come out of the shadow of the colonial legacy, many ethnography 24
25 museums now reinvent themselves by implementing policies of recognition 25
26 for previously marginalised groups and attempt to repair historical wrongs. As 26
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27 Tony Bennett explains, the challenge is to create ‘new relations and perceptions 27
28 of difference that break free from the hierarchically organised form of stigmatic 28
29 othering’ (Bennett 2006, 59). 29
30 This chapter will focus on how museums reshape their colonial heritage using 30
31 the museum as a space for recognition (Taylor 1992) and historical reconciliation. 31
In analysing the strategies that ethnography and former colonial museums in
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32 32
33 Europe adopt in order to go beyond the colonial legacy, two essential kinds of effort 33
34 can be identified. They may loosely be defined as museological and institutional, 34
35 and though intrinsically linked, they will be dealt with here by considering four 35
36 cases that illustrate the different scales of transformation that can be observed: two 36
37 current permanent exhibits, and two major projects involving a policy-oriented 37
38 reframing of colonial heritage. 38
39 39
40 40
41 Whose Objects? in the Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm 41
42 42
43 The reinstallation of the Benin collection of artefacts at the Ethnographical 43
44 Museum of Stockholm in 2010 gave the curators the opportunity to formulate 44

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 40 The Postcolonial Museum

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22 Figure 2.1 Whose Objects? Photograph by Camilla Pagani, June 2012 22
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25 the fundamental question of the legitimate ownership and guardianship of objects 25
26 taken from foreign lands. Museographically, the reinstallation, which has since 26
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27 become part of the permanent exhibition, brings together ‘rhetorics’ of value (Kratz 27
28 2011) that have increasingly become related to ethnographic art collections, but 28
29 which are rarely confronted in displays themselves. The first is produced by the 29
30 increasing attention given to the biography of the object; the individualisation of 30
31 its career before entering the museum serves to negate its status as ‘specimen’. The 31
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32 second is the ever-stronger aestheticisation of the ethnographic object in museum 32

33 displays, described by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett as an ‘art of detachment’ 33
34 that works ‘by suppressing contingency and presenting the objects on their own’ 34
35 (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, 25). 35
36 Yet it is precisely this contingency that Whose Objects? incorporates into its 36
37 presentation by surrounding a highly aesthetic and attentive exhibition of the 37
38 bronzes with the historical and contemporary terms of the debate concerning 38
39 the restitution of the Benin works of art. The iconic image of the Queen Mother 39
40 India that is reproduced at the exhibition’s entrance, a coveted piece in the British 40
41 Museum, sets the tone for a presentation that takes a ‘glocal’ point of view, 41
42 inasmuch as it is relative on the one hand to the museum’s own collection, but 42
43 questioned as part of a general European and even worldwide issue (Östberg 2010, 43
44 52). In terms of exhibition design, it is a date rather than any single object that 44

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 Decolonising National Museums of Ethnography in Europe 41

1 occupies a key position, monumentally blown up to cover a large part of the main 1
2 wall of the exhibition space (Figure 2.1). 2
3 In 1897, British troops invaded the Benin royal palace – bringing about the 3
4 single greatest departure of precious objects from its soil. Presented in conjunction 4
5 with elements on how these objects circulated in Europe to reach Stockholm, it 5
6 becomes key to understanding the presence of the Benin pieces in Sweden. 6
7 This reinstallation came about three years after the very large temporary 7
8 exhibition Benin: Five Centuries of Royal Art toured Europe in 2007 from the 8
9 Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, to Berlin, Chicago and Paris. The modest 9
10 scale of the Stockholm collection, made up of 74 pieces, is probably what has 10
11 allowed the museum to confront the problem of the Benin claims to the objects 11
12 in such a frontal, direct way. A series of labels present ‘voices in the ongoing 12
13 debate’, beginning with a quotation from the Oba Erediauwa’s preface text in the 13

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14 2007 exhibition catalogue: ‘It is our prayer that the people and the government of 14
15 Austria will show humaneness and magnanimity and return to us some of these 15
16 objects which found their way to your country’ (Erediauwa 2007, 13). 16
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The curator of the presentation, Wilhelm Östberg, uses a chorus of viewpoints,
from Neil MacGregor to the West African Museums Programme to ICOM
(International Council of Museums), as an initial measure of how the renegotiation
of power relations in the world is expressed in this debate. But room is also made
for the voices of more modest stakeholders concerned locally, present in the video
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22 installations that question five members of the Nigerian community living in 22
23 Stockholm. 23
24 Significantly, the objects themselves occupy an ‘island’ of display cases in the 24
25 centre, as the main purpose of the exhibit remains to show them to best advantage 25
26 (Östberg 2010, 6), and the visitor cannot simultaneously consider the terms of the 26
27 debate and contemplate the artworks. However, the visitor also gains information 27
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28 about the situation of Benin today and how the role played by these pieces, in 28
29 reproductions and popular imagery, contributes to the identity of a community for 29
30 whom their function and political significance is historically specific and unique 30
31 (HRH Prince Edun Akenzua, in Östberg 2010). This sense of negotiation can also be 31
32 observed in the way communications concerning the exhibition were handled, and 32
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33 the exhibition opening was conceived of as both a cultural and a diplomatic event. 33
34 It is not a new debate, even to the general public, but the merit of this exhibit is 34
35 to have clearly exposed it in the museum itself. In the conclusion of the catalogue, 35
36 the curator himself admits that Stockholm cannot really afford to lose its Benin 36
37 collection; indeed, the prestige that these objects bestow on anyone who holds 37
38 them, owns them and exhibits them stands out as the one common value that is 38
39 sought by all the participants of the debate that surrounds them (Östberg 2010, 39
40 68). The juxtaposition of values expressed by this exhibition allows the museum to 40
41 offer a form of partial reparation, inasmuch as it demonstrates its respect for other 41
42 claims to the interpretation of the object’s place, its cultural, social and political 42
43 importance, although it cannot offer, at least in the near future, any promise of 43
44 actual restitution. 44

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 42 The Postcolonial Museum

1 From the Object to the Subject: The Colonial Theatre at the Tropenmuseum 1
2 2
3 Alongside the issue of the material heritage of appropriations in colonial contexts, 3
4 there is the even more complex question of the intangible heritage of the colonial 4
5 experience. The renovation of the permanent displays of the Tropenmuseum in 5
6 Amsterdam undertaken between 1995 and 2009 explicitly attempted to provide 6
7 a visual and narrative expression of the intangible heritage that was the culture 7
8 of collectionism and its relationship to colonialism both inside and outside the 8
9 museum. Interpreted as a way of thinking about the world and about alterity, 9
10 colonialism had to become an identifiable aspect of the museum’s narrative, as a 10
11 part of Dutch culture which at the height of its influence was, according to Susan 11
12 Legêne, director of the renovation scheme, ‘based on a mix of enlightenment 12
13 ideals and repressive actions’ (Legêne 2009, 12). 13

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14 Key to this project has been the establishment of a display known as The Colonial 14
15 Theatre, characterised by the museum website as ‘an interactive presentation of 15
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lifelike mannequins representing characteristic figures from colonial history’.1 It
offers an ironic materialisation of the idea formulated by Nicholas B. Dirks (1992,
3) that ‘the anthropological concept of culture might never have been invented

Indeed, The Colonial Theatre offers an inversion of how the world was
visualised in colonial museum culture by adopting the use of the diorama to
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22 restage a new layout in the museum introduced in 1938 to celebrate the forty-year 22
23 reign of Queen Wilhelmina. An empty throne provided the metonymical presence 23
24 of the queen herself surrounded by wax figures representing different categories 24
25 of colonial subjects in traditional native costumes. When the museum decided to 25
26 recreate this scene, it replaced ‘the ethnic types’ by ‘some historical archetypes of 26
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27 people who contributed to the very creation of these images of otherness. … And 27
28 as founders of the museum, they also speak for the museum about the past of its 28
29 collections’ (Legêne 2009, 18). 29
30 Yet perhaps the most interesting point here is the critical relationship to 30
31 the museum’s own strategies of representation – the diorama. It is all the more 31
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32 remarkable as it is a mode of display that more than any other directly engages the 32
33 public, for it is capable of provoking a strong sense of ‘recognition’ (Schiele 1996, 33
34 11). This recognition is attained by looking through the glass box that separates the 34
35 viewer from the object/subject on display. First developed for use in natural history 35
36 museums, the diorama’s origins are used here to cast an ironic gaze on the actors 36
37 of its own past, as the coloniser is presented in his ‘natural habitat’, successfully 37
38 inverting another usage of the colonial museum – its tendency to represent ‘nature 38
39 and culture’ together in the display of indigenous people (Dias 2000, 19). 39
40 The glass cases are shaped like scientific test tubes, and thus apt for the 40
41 presentation of ‘specimens’; they also echo the stone columns in this monumental 41
42 display hall. The figures that represent the Dutch actors of this ‘colonial theatre’ 42
43 43
44 1  See http://www.tropenmuseum.nl/5870 (accessed 10 March 2013). 44

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 Decolonising National Museums of Ethnography in Europe 43

1 are placed inside these glass boxes; however, some of the original mannequins 1
2 from the 1938 exhibition have been reused to represent native workers in the 2
3 colonial system – a civil servant and a textile worker, this time wearing clothes 3
4 that bear witness to their acculturation and placed outside the glass cases. Though 4
5 obviously ironic, the display is not devoid of a certain sense of nostalgia that is 5
6 at once contradictory and fitting for such a paradoxical exercise in self-reflexive 6
7 museum representation. Indeed, the actors of colonialism – specimens and pillars 7
8 of the museum’s history – are displayed alongside their individual stories that 8
9 allow them to appear as the museum’s own ancestors, thus becoming an accepted 9
10 part of how the institution understands its colonial past. 10
11 11
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13 The Museum as a Place for Shared Memory 13

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15 In order to understand how colonial memory and heritage are becoming part 15
16 of institutional museum culture itself, one can consider the ongoing project for 16
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the renovation of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren,
Belgium, due to reopen in 2015. The renovation process began in 2001, when
the museum initiated a policy of consultation with international experts, scholars,
members of African associations and the African diaspora in order to reshape
the permanent exhibition and to critically contextualise the colonial roots of the
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22 building and collections. 22
23 As a colonial museum in the most literal sense, the Royal Museum for Central 23
24 Africa was founded following the 1897 Colonial Exhibition in Tervuren, and 24
25 displays objects collected throughout the colonial period until the Republic of 25
26 Congo gained its independence in 1960 (Figure 2.2). The main idea that has driven 26
27 this renovation process since 2001 is that ‘the history of the institution and its 27
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28 collections belongs to Belgians as much as it does to the peoples of Central Africa 28

29 and their diasporas’ (RMCA 2007–2008, 46). 29
30 Since 2003, the museum has developed a policy of consultation and mediation 30
31 with African associations and diasporas through the institution of COMRAF 31
32 (Comité consultative du RMCA – Associations Africaines), an elected committee 32
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33 composed of five professionals of RMCA, nine members of African associations 33

34 and three ‘resource persons’ (RMCA 2007–2008, 46). The mediation with the 34
35 Congolese diaspora within the project of renovation is crucial, since the museum 35
36 intends to build a place for shared memory. 36
37 Undeniably, this approach has already influenced the dynamic temporary 37
38 exhibitions policy that specifically intends to make visitors aware of this shared 38
39 history by offering interpretations of the past that refer to multiple voices. For 39
40 example, the exhibition Indépendance! Congolese Tell their Stories of 50 Years 40
41 of Independence (2010) was interpreted from the Congolese point of view. 41
42 Similarly, Fetish Modernity (2011) implied: ‘a process of reflection about the 42
43 function and the future of the ‘ethnological’ museum, in the knowledge that this 43
44 description, which is often controversial these days, relates to a form of identity 44

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 44 The Postcolonial Museum

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35 Figure 2.2 ‘L’homme léopard’ at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, 35
36 Tervuren. Photograph by Felicity Bodenstein, January 2012 36
37 37
38 38
39 connected with the colonial past of the West, and the meeting with “other” 39
40 cultures’ (Bouttiaux and Seiderer 2011, 18). 40
41 The renovation project is about modernising, renovating and adapting the 41
42 museum structure and building for the needs of the twenty-first century. This 42
43 implies a significant architectural intervention, led by Stephan Beel’s cabinet. 43
44 Of the changes to be undertaken, one point appears particularly relevant to this 44

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 Decolonising National Museums of Ethnography in Europe 45

1 discussion. The museum’s entrance itself will no longer be through the main door 1
2 at the front of the historical building. A new building will provide an entry that 2
3 centralises all the visitor facilities. Once inside, a path will lead visitors into an 3
4 underground gallery, where there will be two spaces for temporary exhibitions, 4
5 an auditorium and rooms for workshops. The provisional plan specifies that this 5
6 will allow for visitors to be warned before accessing the historical building, which 6
7 will become part of the exhibition. Therefore, the public will be able to look at the 7
8 museum as an object in itself from a critical and detached perspective2 that is made 8
9 possible by this metahistorical strategy. 9
10 Another challenge for the project is to describe contemporary Central Africa 10
11 through collections that date back to the 1960s and are explicitly linked to the 11
12 colonial past.3 Since the building and the permanent collection belong to the 12
13 Belgian Federal Heritage, 60 per cent of the permanent exhibition displays 13

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14 will not change. Aware of this limitation, the museum can attempt, through its 14
15 historical building and collection, to play the role of what Pierre Nora (1984) 15
16 defined as ‘un lieu de mémoire’. It aims, however, to be a lieu of a different kind, 16
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pertaining not only to a national and exclusive memory, but to a transnational
relationship between two communities, united by a common but undoubtedly
difficult past.
As well as becoming a metahistorical object to provide a critical distance to
the history and the stereotypes of Africa that were showcased by the museum
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22 during colonial times, the permanent exhibition will also be transformed through 22
23 an interdisciplinary approach, which explicitly proposes to deconstruct traditional 23
24 ethnographic and scientific categorisation in order to have a closer impact on 24
25 the public. It is hoped that this pluridisciplinary perspective will contribute to 25
26 opening up the permanent collection to themes that deal with Central Africa in a 26
27 contemporary, diversified and dynamic way. 27
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30 Beyond Self/other Dualism: ‘Glocal’ Paradigm, Multiple Voices 30
31 31
32 By adopting an interdisciplinary approach and a policy of temporary exhibitions, 32
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33 the brand-new institution the Museum of World Culture, which was inaugurated 33
34 in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2004, illustrates a very different kind of strategy 34
35 to question the colonial heritage of ethnography museums and to relate it to 35
36 contemporary topics. It is part of the state-owned National Museums of World 36
37 Culture, which includes three other museums: the Museum of Far Eastern 37
38 Antiquities, the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, and the 38
39 Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm. In 1999, the Swedish government decided 39
40 to create: 40
41 41
42 2 Interview with Christine Bluard conducted by Camilla Pagani, Royal Museum for 42
43 Central Africa, 29 October 2012. 43
44 3 Ibid. 44

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 46 The Postcolonial Museum

1 something new in the world of museums …. It will mirror similarities and 1

2 differences in ways of thinking, lifestyles and living conditions, as well as cultural 2
3 change in Sweden and in the world. Visitors will be given the opportunity to 3
4 reflect on their own cultural identity and those of others. (Lagerkvist 2008, 89) 4
5 5
6 Indeed, the National Museums of World Culture have been established ‘to play 6
7 a specific role in dealing with the challenges of multicultural Sweden, through 7
8 their international collections and networks’ (Swedish Government 1998, 25). 8
9 According to the official statement: ‘the Museum of World Culture is a forum 9
10 for emotional and intellectual encounters that helps people feel at home wherever 10
11 they are, trust each other and accept joint responsibility for the planet’s constantly 11
12 changing future’ (Swedish Government 1998, 25). 12
13 The museum houses the collections from the old Ethnographic Museum of 13

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14 Gothenburg, consisting of about 100,000 items, most of which come from Latin 14
15 America, but intentionally it has chosen not to define itself as an ethnography 15
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museum. It does not have any permanent exhibitions, but hosts temporary
exhibitions in its five halls. Alongside the exhibit halls there is a large and diverse
programme of experimental music, dance, theatre and conferences.
The museum focuses on the concept of ‘world culture’ – which is the translation
of the Swedish neologism världskultur. For the English translation, according to
museum curator Cajsa Lagerkvist, it was decided to adopt the singular instead of
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22 the plural form in order to break with the ethnographic tradition, where different 22
23 cultures were displayed as distinctly identifiable. Thus ‘world culture’ is interpreted 23
24 ‘in a dynamic and open-ended manner’ (Museum of World Culture 2004), dealing 24
25 with contemporary issues such as globalisation, migration, cultural diversity, 25
26 hybridity, postcoloniality and gender studies through a multiple-voice and 26
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27 interdisciplinary perspective (Lagerkvist 2006). According to the official website, 27

28 ‘world culture is not only about communication, reciprocity, and interdependence, 28
29 but the specificity, concretion and uniqueness of each and every individual’. From 29
30 a regional focus, the museum investigates global contemporary issues, using a 30
31 transnational and ‘glocal’ paradigm (Lagerkvist 2008). 31
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32 The strategy it adopts is an intense policy of idea-oriented temporary 32

33 exhibitions (lasting from a few months up to three years) where it is possible 33
34 to offer a take on different sensitive topics that can be discussed by visitors 34
35 inside the exhibition space or during specific conferences. Since the opening, 37 35
36 exhibitions have featured contemporary global issues such as migrations, HIV, 36
37 inter-religious dialogue, cultural diversity, and gender and LGBT (lesbian, gay, 37
38 bisexual, transgender) issues. A telling example was Jerusalem, an exhibition of 38
39 pictures portraying LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) persons 39
40 from the three monotheist faiths living in Jerusalem, representing naked people 40
41 or homosexual activities next to quotations from the sacred texts which condemn 41
42 LGBTQ habits. As reported by the curator of contemporary global issues Klas 42
43 Grinell, this case ‘is important and worthwhile’ because ‘the sensitive issues 43
44 are forced to the surface’ (Grinell 2011, 228). In particular, he highlights the 44

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22 Figure 2.3 Detail of permanent installation, National Museum of 22
23 World Culture, Gothenburg. Photograph by Camilla Pagani, 23
24 June 2012. 24
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27 complexity of conceiving an exhibition where there is ‘intersectionality’ between 27
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28 different sensitive topics belonging to different frameworks such as sexuality and 28

29 religion. 29
30 The museum also offers the possibility for reflection on collecting in the former 30
31 colonial context, through some rare permanent installations situated in the stairwell 31
32 (Figure 2.3). Objects collected by Swedish Lieutenant Otto Ljungqvist in Congo 32
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33 during the Belgian occupation or by Swedish explorer Thorild Wulff in China in 33

34 the late nineteenth century are displayed alongside open-ended questions placed 34
35 next to the objects: ‘Why were these objects taken?’ ‘Who owns these objects?’ 35
36 The museum does not want to provide answers. Rather, it tries to place conflicts and 36
37 debates about the colonial legacy of collections in the exhibition path itself. 37
38 38
39 39
40 Conclusion 40
41 41
42 The notion of ‘decolonialising collections’ has been around since the end of the 42
43 1980s, and essentially designates a process in which a postcolonial discourse 43
44 serves to progressively singularise the ethnographic object and extract it from 44

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 48 The Postcolonial Museum

1 former systems of museum classification that de facto maintained the object in 1

2 its ‘colonised’ status (Dias 2000, 27). It has generated a critique of the museum 2
3 that goes beyond the specific colonial context of collecting and display; in 1992, 3
4 Michael M. Ames wrote: ‘Museums are about cannibals and glass boxes, a fate 4
5 they cannot seem to escape no matter how hard they try’ (Ames 1992, 3). To 5
6 perhaps escape this ‘fate’, the efforts described above suggest ways in which this 6
7 ‘cannibalistic’ appropriation of the materials of other cultures and the exhibitionary 7
8 process that accompanies it might be exposed. 8
9 What does this ‘exposure’ of colonial roots allow us to say about the relationship 9
10 between postcoloniality and globalisation? What does this strange juxtaposition of 10
11 historical and metahistorical commentary on the museum’s own past and the new 11
12 attention to the issues that face contemporary global culture, observed in all of 12
13 these cases, say about the new role of ethnography museums and former colonial 13

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14 museums? The role is in any case an uneasy and difficult one, as the specialist in 14
15 African literature Simon Gikandi points out: 15
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Besides their shared cultural grammar, however, the relationship between
globalization and postcoloniality is not clear; neither are their respective
meanings or implications. Is postcoloniality a consequence of the globalization
of culture? Do the key terms in both categories describe a general state of
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21 cultural transformation in a world where the authority of the nation-state has
22 collapsed? (Gikandi 2005, 609) 22
23 23
24 Certainly the ‘glocal’ repositioning of these national museums is an attempt to 24
25 question their historically central position (as opposed to peripheral colonies) in 25
26 the definition of cultures as a binary process that separates ‘us’ from the ‘others’. 26
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27 The reflexive process of exposing colonial roots is key to overcoming this duality, 27
28 as it allows the museum to look at itself as the other, as it contemplates its own 28
29 ancestors behind glass cases, as it asks why these objects belong here, as it 29
30 becomes an historical object in its own right by becoming strange to itself. It may 30
31 be hoped that the sense of foreignness, perhaps even unease, that these displays 31
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32 and museum strategies can provoke will only lead to new discoveries. 32
33 33
34 34
35 References 35
36 36
37 Ames, Michael M. 1992. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of 37
38 Museums. Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press. 38
39 Bennett, Tony. 2006. ‘Exhibition, Difference and the Logic of Culture’. In Museum 39
40 Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, edited by Ivan Karp et al. 40
41 Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 41
42 Bouttiaux, Anne-Marie and Anna Seiderer, eds. 2011. Fetish Modernity. Brussels: 42
43 Musée Royal de l’Afrique centrale. 43
44 44

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1 Dias, Nélia. 2000. ‘Musée et colonialisme: entre passé et present’. In Du Musée 1

2 Colonial au musée des cultures du monde, edited by Taffin Dominique. Paris: 2
3 Maisonneuve et Larose, 15–34. 3
4 Dirks, Nicholas B. 1992. ‘Introduction’. In Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor, 4
5 MI: Michigan University Press. 5
6 Erediauwa, Omo N’Oba. 2007. ‘Préambule’. In Bénin: Cinq siècles d’art royal. 6
7 Paris: Snoeck. 7
8 Gikandi, Simon. 2005. ‘Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality’. In 8
9 Postcolonialisms, edited by Gaurav Desai and Supriya Nair. Oxford: Berg. 9
10 Grinell, Klas. 2011. ‘When Legitimate Claims Collide: Communities, Media and 10
11 Dialogue’. Museum and Society 9(3): 227–43. 11
12 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, 12
13 and Heritage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 13

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14 Kratz, Corinne A. 2011. ‘Rhetorics of Value: Constituting Worth and Meaning 14
15 through Cultural Display’. Visual Anthropology 271: 21–48. 15
16 Lagerkvist, Cajsa. 2006. ‘Empowerment and Anger: Learning How to Share 16
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Ownership of the Museum’. Museum and Society 4(2): 52–68.
——. 2008. ‘The Museum of World Culture: A “Glocal” Museum of a New Kind’.
In Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity, edited by K. Goodnow and
H. Akman. New York: Berghahn Books.
Lebovics, Herman. 2007. ‘Two Paths Toward Post-coloniality: The National
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22 Museum of the American Indian in Washington and the Musée du Quai Branly 22
23 in Paris’. Cahiers Parisiens 3: 887–95. 23
24 Legêne, Susan. 2009. ‘Refurbishment: The Tropenmuseum for a Change’. 24
25 Tropenmuseum Bulletin 391: 12–20. 25
26 Mauzé, Marie and Joëlle Rostkowski. 2007. ‘La fin des musées d’ethnographie? 26
27 Peuples autochtones et nouvelles perspectives muséales’. Le Débat 147: 80–90. 27
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28 Museum of World Culture. 2004. Backgrounder. Gothenburg: Museum of World 28

29 Culture. 29
30 Nora, Pierre. 1984. Les Lieux de Mémoire. Paris: Gallimard. 30
31 Östberg, Wilhelm. 2010. Whose Objects? Art Treasures from the Kingdom of 31
32 Benin in the Collection of the Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm. Stockholm: 32
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33 Ethnografiska Museet. 33
34 Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA). 2007–2008. Annual Report. Tervuren: 34
35 RMCA. Accessed 14 November 2013. http://www.africamuseum.be/research/ 35
36 publications/rmca/online/jaarverslag0708-NLFREN.pdf. 36
37 Schiele, Bernard. 1996. ‘Introduction’. Publics et musées 99: 10–14. 37
38 Swedish Government. 1998. Official Committee Report on the National Museums 38
39 of World Culture. Stockholm: Statens Offentliga Utredningar. 39
40 Taylor, Charles. 1992. Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’, edited 40
41 by Amy Gutmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 41
42 42
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 1 Chapter 3 1
2 2
3 Colonial Spaces, Postcolonial Narratives: 3
4 4
5 The Exhibitionary Landscape of Fort Cochin 5
6 6
7 in India 7
8 8
9 Neelima Jeychandran 9
10 10
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13 13

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14 ‘Welcome to God’s own country’ and the ‘land of memories’ are the emblematic 14
15 words that are inscribed on signposts of the Southern Indian harbour town of 15
Fort Cochin (Figure 3.1).1 Being the earliest European settlement, Fort Cochin
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was established to safeguard the European maritime interests and to facilitate
the spice trade. As Fort Cochin served as the social and economic hub for the
Portuguese, Dutch, and later for the British trading companies, the landscape and
cultural geography of the town were continuously reshaped over the years. The
built environment at Fort Cochin is a fine synthesis of Portuguese, Dutch and
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22 British elements, and it is this unique blending of several European architectural 22
23 styles and indigenous methods of construction that makes Cochin a popular tourist 23
24 destination. Although it lost its prominence as an international trading port in the 24
25 postcolonial phase, it soon became an important cultural centre and was declared 25
26 a heritage zone in 1991 to memorialise the colonial era. 26
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27 This chapter will inquire into the ways in which the architectural forms in the 27
28 erstwhile colonial port city are transformed and recast as a cultural heritage and 28
29 places of memory. I shall discuss the ways in which the town of Fort Cochin exists 29
30 as an alternative archive that narrates colonial history through unique modes of 30
31 museal display, both within and beyond the walls of the museum spaces. Treating 31
this landscape as lieux de mémoire – which, according to memory theorist Pierre
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32 32
33 Nora, are places where memory crystallises – I will examine the potency of these 33
34 exhibition spaces as transmitters of memory. Finally, I shall discuss how the Kochi- 34
35 Muziris Biennale re-engages with Cochin’s transnational past by commissioning 35
36 installations that directly reflect the harbour town’s complex and intertwined 36
37 history. 37
38 In this chapter, I shall investigate the mnemonic and mimetic power of exhibition 38
39 spaces and discuss how different institutions, individuals and communities employ 39
40 spaces such as museums and heritage sites in postcolonial India to narrate history, 40
41 41
42 1  Fort Cochin is also spelt and written as ‘Kochi’, the way locals pronounce the 42
43 name. Throughout this chapter, I have used ‘Cochin’ as several colonial port historians and 43
44 cultural theorists have used the European name to narrate the history of the place. 44

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 52 The Postcolonial Museum

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Figure 3.1 A signpost at the public space now called Vasco da Gama
Square that refers to Fort Cochin as the ‘Land of Memories’.
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22 Photograph by Neelima Jeychandran, May 2012 22
23 23
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25 circulate cultural memories, and address modern socio-political tensions through 25
26 curatorial and artistic interventions. This chapter is also a means to discuss the 26
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27 generation of diverse and contrasting discourses on colonial occupation and to 27

28 analyse the different ways in which narratives about European cultural connections 28
29 are presented using the discursive space of museums. I shall unpack the rhetoric of 29
30 such spaces in Fort Cochin and unravel their present performative roles as relics of 30
31 colonialism, heritage structures, memorial sites, museums and exhibition spaces. 31
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32 32
33 33
34 History and Contemporary Existence at Fort Cochin 34
35 35
36 Located on the Malabar Coast in the Indian Ocean, Fort Cochin is a sea port, and 36
37 one of the three municipalities amalgamated to form the city of Cochin, the second 37
38 largest city in the state of Kerala. For centuries, it served as an international harbour 38
39 and a port of call for vessels freighting from Europe and the Mediterranean to India 39
40 and beyond. As it offered a safe docking for ships, the European trading companies 40
41 vied to gain control of the harbour and the town. In 1503, the Portuguese became 41
42 successful and established Fort Immanuel as the first European structure in India, 42
43 which they later expanded into a big urban township with many civil buildings, 43
44 warehouses, hospital and churches, including the famous St Francis Church. 44

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 Colonial Spaces, Postcolonial Narratives 53

1 Cochin was taken over by the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde 1
2 Oostindische Compagnie – VOC) in 1663, and it became an important political 2
3 and commercial centre for the Dutch. During the Dutch occupation, it was 3
4 transformed into a fortified city, where all company employees and their families 4
5 lived until 1795. Modelled in accordance with the Dutch town planning of the era, 5
6 the urban layout of Cochin was much smaller in area compared to the urban sprawl 6
7 during the Portuguese phase. Unlike the Portuguese, the VOC was not interested 7
8 in building splendid churches: more mundanely, it sought to establish utilitarian 8
9 structures and spaces (Singh 2010). In 1795, Fort Cochin passed to the British 9
10 when the Dutch forces surrendered to the British East India Company. After the 10
11 takeover, the British overhauled many buildings and made several changes to the 11
12 landscape of Cochin to inscribe their presence and power in Cochin. The British 12
13 were responsible for tearing down the fort walls and expanding the town to its 13

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14 present proportions. After independence, the town came to be known as Fort 14
15 Cochin as a reference to the earlier fortified settlement. 15
16 After the colonial period, as the local administration and economic activities 16
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shifted to mainland Ernakulam, Fort Cochin lost its earlier importance and became
a sleepy town. In 1991, gauging the potential of the town as a tourist destination,
the Tourism Development Board of Kerala declared Fort Cochin a heritage zone,
and extensive restoration projects were developed.2 Today, on the heritage and
tourist map of Fort Cochin some nineteen historical sites like St Francis Church,
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22 Santa Cruz Basilica, Dutch East India Company Gate and spaces like Vasco-da- 22
23 Gama Square, the parade ground and Dutch cemetery are marked as places of 23
24 historic memory. The restoration projects have revitalised the remnants of the 24
25 colonial culture and made them visually prominent as in-situ exhibits. 25
26 Apart from the heritage buildings and historical monuments, there are two 26
27 small museums at Fort Cochin: the Indo-Portuguese Museum and the Maritime 27
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28 Museum. The Indo-Portuguese Museum showcases the Christian religious 28

29 heritage of Cochin. Established with the help of the Portuguese cultural institution 29
30 the Calouste-Gulbenkian Foundation, the Diocese of Cochin organised 30
31 the religious artefacts and precious objects in its possession in a newly opened 31
32 building in February 2000 within the premises of Bishop House. The museum is 32
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33 housed right above the location of the old Portuguese fort so as to commemorate 33
34 the Portuguese cultural influence at Cochin. On the lower ground floor of the 34
35 museum is the remnant of the wall of the Portuguese Fort Immanuel that was 35
36 destroyed by the Dutch. Religious paraphernalia from various churches, including 36
37 37
38 38
2  The revitalisation programme was carried out by the Department of Tourism, Kerala
39 39
State, Fort Cochin Heritage Zone Conservation Society, the Indian National Trust for Art
40 40
and Cultural Heritage, the Revenue Divisional Office of Fort Kochi and the Corporation
41 of Cochin (City Council). Furthermore, the Archaeological Survey of India continues to 41
42 protect some of the monuments under its jurisdiction. In addition to these organisations, 42
43 private homeowners, hoteliers and other non-governmental institutions have restored many 43
44 historic homes and other spaces and put them to various uses. 44

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 54 The Postcolonial Museum

1 liturgical items, an altar, insignia and ceremonial items and other gold and silver 1
2 sacred objects, are displayed in the five rooms on level one of the museum. Also 2
3 exhibited in a small room are a few cultural objects from the Portuguese era and 3
4 a large map of Portuguese Fort Cochin etched on tiles. The Maritime Museum 4
5 housed within the naval base at Fort Cochin was established in 1989. The museum 5
6 presents a chronological account of the maritime history of India and the evolution 6
7 of the Indian Navy. A wide range of displays, including dioramas, models, naval 7
8 charts, maps and photographs, presents the maritime heritage of India, including 8
9 the maritime history of the Malabar Coast and Cochin. Significant historical events 9
10 pertaining to the history of the Malabar Coast are displayed in a separate room. 10
11 Scholars such as Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998) and Bella Dicks 11
12 (2000) have demonstrated that the transformation of places into heritage sites 12
13 and exhibition platforms adds value to existing assets that have either ceased to 13

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14 be viable or have become obsolete. This is very true in the case of Fort Cochin. 14
15 While colonial buildings and precincts were reinvented and regenerated to act 15
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as cultural signifiers of the past, they simultaneously produced something new
that is of economic importance in the present. With the transformation of habitats
and buildings at Cochin, architectural forms and other places started a second
life as heritage sites. Invisible and often unnoticed spaces like streets, harbour
fronts, cemeteries and other mundane locations also acquired a new existence as
historical venues. The influx of visitors in turn stimulated the establishment of
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22 museums and museum-like organisations, thus transforming Fort Cochin into a 22
23 large exhibition space. Arguably, it is tourism that has caused the transformation of 23
24 Fort Cochin into a living museum and ‘exhibitionary complex’. As Kirshenblatt- 24
25 Gimblett (1998) has argued, heritage and tourism are collaborative industries, 25
26 with heritage converting locations into destinations, and tourism making them 26
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27 economically viable as exhibits of themselves. 27

28 28
29 29
30 Transformation of Fort Cochin into an Open-air Museum 30
31 31
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32 In its current existence as a heritage enclave and open-air museum space, Fort 32
33 Cochin has come to typify the features of an ‘exhibitionary complex’ in which 33
34 places and people are arranged and unfolded in the most dramatic fashion. Here, 34
35 I borrow the concept proposed by Tony Bennett (2004) in his critical analysis 35
36 of colonial fairs and exhibitions. Bennett argues that in the colonial fairs of the 36
37 twentieth century, the world itself was transformed into a display mode as the 37
38 fairs systematically arranged and presented commodities, cultural aspects and 38
39 even people from the colonised world as objects for consumption. Fort Cochin in 39
40 the postcolonial phase represents the phenomenon of an ‘exhibitionary complex’ 40
41 chiefly because of the manner in which architectural structures are displayed by 41
42 employing various strategies to showcase colonial history and power. 42
43 Like Bennett, Timothy Mitchell, who has analysed the ordering strategy of the 43
44 non-Western world in the imperial exhibitions, posits that the cultures of the Orient 44

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 Colonial Spaces, Postcolonial Narratives 55

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Figure 3.2 The Museum Company, an antique store-cum-curio shop
advertising itself as a museum at Fort Cochin. Photograph by
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22 Neelima Jeychandran, May 2012 22
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25 were arranged before an observing subject into a system of signification declaring 25
26 itself to be a mere ‘object’, which signified something further (Mitchell 2004). It 26
27 is worth noting the similarity in the structural ordering of the imperial exhibitions 27
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28 and the heritage complex at Fort Cochin and its signification. Like the great 28
29 exhibitions, the colonial fortified township of Fort Cochin was a colossal colonial 29
30 endeavour constructed to assert power and generate commerce. Most importantly, 30
31 such creations were microcosmic representations of the imperial world. While the 31
32 great exhibitions showcased the cultures of the colonised world in a miniature 32
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33 format in the imperial capitals, the fort complex at Cochin was a microcosmic 33
34 representation of the imperial centre and civil society.3 The built structures in the 34
35 fortified township of Cochin were a visual representation of wealth and power. 35
36 While the exhibitions showcased the colonies for the imperial subjects, the fort 36
37 complex displayed the imperial world to the people in the colony. Today, various 37
38 organisations and people at Fort Cochin employ the residual structures of colonial 38
39 spatial ordering as means to display colonial culture. 39
40 40
41 41
42 3  Fashioned like the imperial capitals, the fortified township at Cochin had civil 42
43 institutions like courts, orphanages, schools, prisons, hospitals, churches, taverns, 43
44 workshops and warehouses. 44

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 56 The Postcolonial Museum

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Figure 3.3 David Hall, the seventeenth-century residence of the Dutch
governor, which currently serves as a contemporary art gallery
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22 and also one of the venues of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. 22
23 Photograph by Neelima Jeychandran, December 2012 23
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26 In the contemporary phase at Fort Cochin, one can see diversified forms 26
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27 of museums and exhibition spaces, which I would say are a unique blend of 27
28 commercial display and cultural heritage. In addition to the two museums, there 28
29 are a few curio shops that present themselves as museums to lure tourists to buy 29
30 artefacts and traditional crafts (Figure 3.2). Local shop owners borrow the display 30
31 strategy and exhibiting format of the museum as a means to demonstrate the 31
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32 credibility of their enterprise as a more genuine place in a street closely packed 32

33 with antique stores and curio shops. 33
34 Katarzyna Pieprzak, writing about the different types of museums in Morocco, 34
35 notes that museum-like spaces bourgeoned in Morocco’s local marketplaces with 35
36 the increased tourist influx, as the local vendors, seeing the potential, used the name 36
37 and the model of museums to attract customers (Pieprzak 2010). Writing about the 37
38 display culture in modern India, Appadurai and Breckenridge note that there is 38
39 an intermingling of the colonial model and Indian urban display strategy in the 39
40 Indian phenomenon of exhibition-cum-sale, where one is invited to view as well 40
41 as purchase the objects on display. They view this phenomenon as emerging out of 41
42 a constellation of factors, with the museum-festival-sale promoting a specialised 42
43 cultural complex where objects and experiences combine visual pleasure, ethnic 43
44 and national display, and consumer appetite (Appadurai and Breckenridge 2004). 44

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 Colonial Spaces, Postcolonial Narratives 57

1 Building on the above arguments, I would say that Fort Cochin is a heritage 1
2 complex in which culture is showcased according to the dominant Indian ideals 2
3 of display as seen in the exhibition-cum-sale representational format. In addition 3
4 to heritage sites, Fort Cochin also has a few good contemporary art galleries such 4
5 as the Kashi Art Gallery and David Hall (Figure 3.3), which are the venues for the 5
6 Kochi-Muziris Biennale. 6
7 Because of the presence of a diverse range of exhibition avenues such as 7
8 museums, art galleries, antique shops fashioned like museums and cultural 8
9 centres that exists alongside historical spaces and archaeological monuments 9
10 in a very small radius of two kilometres, I argue that Fort Cochin has the 10
11 characteristics of an exhibitionary complex. However, there are elements that 11
12 are antithetical to Bennett’s notion. Unlike the colonial exhibitionary complex, 12
13 where an attempt was made to display the cultures of the world, at Fort Cochin 13

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14 the remnants of the colonial era are curated and showcased to lure both domestic 14
15 and international visitors. At Fort Cochin, vestiges and fragments from the 15
16 colonial period are presented chiefly for the visual consumption of domestic 16
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tourists. This curiosity and interest in colonial heritage on the part of Indian
visitors is a postcolonial way of romanticising the colonial past that is shrouded
in some kind of mystery and obscurity in postmodern India. I would say that
a reverse orientalism process is at work here as the visitors yearn to unravel
colonialism in India.
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24 Postcolonial Memory and Museums 24
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26 In his penetrating analysis of places as receptacles of memory, Edward Casey 26
27 shows that places have the power to retain or preserve memory and are potentially 27
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28 very receptive (Casey, 1987). He proposes that place must be regarded as a 28

29 keeper of memories like the human body or brain, mind or language. Treating 29
30 the colonial buildings and spaces at Fort Cochin as sites or realms of memory, 30
31 I argue that the built environments, ruins and museums at Fort Cochin are not 31
32 ‘soul-less’ heritage sites, but rather complex and dynamic spaces which house the 32
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33 memories of those who inhabited them once, and also of those who traverse them. 33
34 According to Pierre Nora, places of memory, or lieux de mémoire, are sites where 34
35 cultural memory crystallises and secretes itself (Nora, 1989). Material vestiges 35
36 of the past such as heritage sites, historical buildings and museums are visible 36
37 anchors for memory. In this light, Fort Cochin as an open-air museum space is a 37
38 lieu de mémoire that preserves the memory of colonialism and a site that plays a 38
39 key role in contemporary production and circulation of selected memories of the 39
40 colonial past. 40
41 Because of their function as places of memory that are intended to preserve 41
42 narratives of the colonial past, the production of such memories and its discursive 42
43 trajectory should be critically analysed. In showing why institutions like museums 43
44 matter in the postcolonial phase, Gyan Prakash argues that museums are critical 44

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 58 The Postcolonial Museum

1 sites that need to be revisited to unpack colonial discourses. According to 1

2 him, far from disappearing, colonialism and its constructions loom as spectres 2
3 within the discursive space of the museum (Prakash 2004). Being a port city 3
4 that facilitated trade, the history of Fort Cochin is complex and fraught because 4
5 cultural connections also served as the entry point for the Christian missionaries 5
6 that altered the religious landscape of the region. However, what is depicted and 6
7 articulated through the built structures and museums at Fort Cochin is rather a 7
8 simple narrative about the initial arrival of the Portuguese and the presence of other 8
9 Europeans along the Malabar Coast who developed the landscape and culture of 9
10 the local people. The rhetoric of coercion and subjugation is largely absent. 10
11 To review the contemporary allure and outlook of citizens towards 11
12 colonialism, former colonial buildings that are transformed into heritage sites 12
13 and museums in India should be critically reviewed as spaces that not only 13

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14 resonate with the memories of colonialism, but also generate a new discourse 14
15 on colonialism. In order to deconstruct the cultural, political and psychic 15
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dimensions of postcolonial memory, K.E. Supriya has studied the museum 16
in Fort St George, Chennai – the erstwhile centre of the British East India 17
Company’s political and economic activities. By analysing how Indians 18
interact with colonial exhibits, Supriya (2004) claims that postcolonial Indians 19
craft a complex and textured idea of British rule in India. Observing how 20
museum visitors negotiate with the textured historicity of the museum space 21
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22 and the objects, Supriya states that in postcolonial nations, preservation of built 22
23 structures and objects stimulates the production of both a public and private 23
24 form of memory concerning colonialism that is restorative: the disturbing past 24
25 is not refused or rejected, but rather reworked to achieve equilibrium in the 25
26 present. Supriya’s analysis of the role of the postcolonial spaces and Indian 26
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27 visitors’ approach to such spaces is true to an extent. For instance, at Fort 27

28 Cochin the colonial occupation, trade and the eventual dominance and rule are 28
29 not portrayed and read as oppressive histories of colonialism in India. Rather, 29
30 visitors often view Fort Cochin as a place that benefited and developed due to 30
31 European interactions and trade exchanges. 31
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32 While museums and monuments at Fort Cochin, as memory places, ensure 32

33 the discursive formations of cultural narratives for a community, they also create 33
34 divergent and contrasting narratives about colonialism and its postcolonial 34
35 perspectives. Writing about the rhetorical nature of memory places, Carole Blair, 35
36 Greg Dickinson and Brian L. Ott note that memory sites provide an opportunity for 36
37 visitors to imagine their links to peoples of the past and realise their connections 37
38 in the present (Blair et al. 2010, 26). In most cases at Fort Cochin, locals also re- 38
39 inscript the histories of the built-in spaces with contemporary forms of narration. 39
40 For instance, some historical spaces have been restored so that visitors have the 40
41 opportunity to inhabit them, as they have been transformed into heritage hotels. A 41
42 case in point is the Vasco Homestay, which according to popular local belief was 42
43 the residence of Vasco da Gama. Although there is no historical evidence, the locals 43
44 and the city tourism board consider the place to be the house of the Portuguese 44

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 Colonial Spaces, Postcolonial Narratives 59

1 mariner.4 There are other cases where the colonial history is transformed as a result 1
2 of popular postcolonial memory and interaction with space. At Fort Cochin, the 2
3 local residents who run home-stays and curio shops are not only creating a new 3
4 cultural narrative, but are also functioning as interlocutors of the past and keepers 4
5 of memories. 5
6 6
7 7
8 A Site for Multiple Cultural Productions 8
9 9
10 More recently, the landscape of Fort Cochin was revived for a different kind of 10
11 project. Being the host town for the first edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 11
12 several heritage buildings and disused structures of historical importance were 12
13 chosen as exhibition spaces to display artworks and large-scale installations. The 13

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14 main venues for the Biennale are the Aspin Wall (a British warehouse with a 14
15 bungalow), Pepper House (a former warehouse used for the spice trade) and David 15
16 Hall (the former residence of the Dutch governor). The intention of the Kochi- 16
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Muziris Biennale is to create site-specific works that will articulate as well as
respond to the historicity of the place. With the conceptual agenda of performing
a critical spatial intervention, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale curatorial team invited
Indian and international artists to survey various locations in Fort Cochin and
Mattancherry to create works that would resonate with the multi-textured history
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22 of Cochin and its contemporary culture. From being a heritage town, Fort Cochin 22
23 is soon turning into the art capital of India. The Biennale not only brought artists 23
24 and art enthusiasts from all over the world to the erstwhile colonial port city, but 24
25 also provided an opportunity for visitors to re-engage with the complex history 25
26 and culture of the town through artistic productions ranging from paintings, 26
27 sculptures, installations, video-art and conceptual art to graffiti and performances. 27
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28 Renowned Indian artists such as Vivan Sundaram, Subodh Gupta and K.P. 28
29 Reji have not only addressed current socio-political and cultural issues, but also 29
30 opened up dialogues about the sorts of global exchange, oceanic trade, inter- 30
31 culturalism and migration that Cochin, as a prominent sea port, has facilitated 31
32 for centuries. Furthermore, some commissioned works symbolically and 32
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33 metonymically feature specific historical events and characters. For instance, the 33
34 installation of San Francisco-based Portuguese artist Rigo 23 at the abandoned 34
35 boat jetty at Calvathy Canal (the waterway that historically separated the 35
36 colonial town of Fort Cochin from Mattancherry, the traditional trading centre) 36
37 addresses lesser-known or obfuscated histories. The three installations by 37
38 Rigo 23, suspended from the girders of the old jetty that slowly sways in the 38
39 ocean breeze, disseminate marginalised narratives such as Vasco da Gama’s 39
40 unsuccessful endeavours and his brutality, and also the enslavement and murder 40
41 41
42 4  The current owners of the house advertise the home-stay facility as a place where 42
43 one can experience and learn about Vasco da Gama’s life in Cochin. See ‘Vasco House Fort 43
44 Cochin’, http://www.vascohomestay.com (accessed 23 February 2013). 44

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1 of African slaves in Colonial Fort Cochin, especially during the Portuguese and 1
2 Dutch eras. By commissioning and displaying contemporary artworks in public 2
3 spaces, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is creating a new layer of meanings to add 3
4 to the multi-textured history of the place. 4
5 5
6 6
7 Conclusion 7
8 8
9 This chapter has attempted to tease out the different ways in which colonial 9
10 buildings and spaces are revitalised in postcolonial India, both to conserve the 10
11 memory of the colonial period and to produce a new attraction for domestic and 11
12 international visitors alike. Further, I have noted that the contemporary existence 12
13 and persistence of historical sites in Fort Cochin are more viable as places of 13

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14 memory or exhibition spaces. 14
15 In conclusion, in contemporary India, heritage zones like the one at Fort 15
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Cochin have come to replace the old exhibitionary complex. Places of historical
importance are exhibited and curated owing to the influx of tourists. With heritage
sites, museums and performances functioning as the new cultural capitals of
postcolonial nation-states, time and money are invested to design new features
that will add to the existing value of these sites. However, although the town of
Fort Cochin survives as an open-air museum that narrates the story of colonialism,
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22 it is not a space that critically questions colonial discourses. Rather, the colonial 22
23 phase is presented as an era of inter-cultural exchange. 23
24 24
25 25
26 References 26
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27 27
28 Appadurai, Arjun and Carol A. Breckenridge. 2004. ‘Museums are Good to Think: 28
29 Heritage on View in India’. In Grasping the World, edited by C. Fargo and D. 29
30 Preziosi. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 685–99. 30
31 Bennett, Tony. 2004. ‘Exhibitionary Complex’. In Grasping the World, edited by 31
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32 C. Fargo and D. Preziosi. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 413–41. 32

33 Blair, Carole, Greg Dickinson and Brian L. Ott. 2010. Places of Public Memory: 33
34 The Rhetorics of Museums and Memorials. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of 34
35 Alabama Press. 35
36 Casey, Edward. 1987. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington, 36
37 IN: Indiana University Press. 37
38 Dicks, Bella. 2000. Heritage Place and Community. Cardiff: University of Wales 38
39 Press. 39
40 Fargo, Claire and Donald Preziosi, eds. 2004. Grasping the World: The Idea of the 40
41 Museum. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. 41
42 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, 42
43 and Heritage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 43
44 44

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 Colonial Spaces, Postcolonial Narratives 61

1 Mitchell, Timothy. 2004. ‘Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order’. In Grasping 1

2 the World, edited by C. Fargo and D. Preziosi. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2
3 442–61. 3
4 Nora, Pierre. 1989. ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux des Mémoire’. 4
5 Representations 26: 7–24. 5
6 Pieprzak, Katarzyna. 2010. Imagined Museums: Art and Modernity in Postcolonial 6
7 Morocco. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 7
8 Prakash, Gyan. 2004. ‘Museum Matters’. In Museum Studies: An Anthology of 8
9 Contexts, edited by Bettina Messias Carbonell. Oxford: Blackwell, 208–15. 9
10 Singh, Anjana. 2010. Fort Cochin in Kerala 1750–1830: The Social Condition of 10
11 a Dutch Community in an Indian Milieu. Leiden: IDC Publishers. 11
12 Supriya, Karudapuram Eachambadi. 2004. Remembering Empire: Power, Memory 12
13 Place in Postcolonial India. New York: Peter Lang. 13

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 1 Chapter 4 1
2 2
3 Ethnographic Museums: From Colonial 3
4 4
5 Exposition to Intercultural Dialogue 5
6 6
7 Fabienne Boursiquot 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 The Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM) is 12
13 scheduled to open in Marseille in June 2013. This new museum brings together 13

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14 collections from the Musée de l’Homme and the Musée National des Arts et 14
15 Traditions Populaires (MNATP), two major ethnographic museums that opened in 15
Paris in 1937. Together with other new ‘museums of society’, MuCEM announces
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a shift in the treatment of cultural difference: whereas twentieth-century
ethnographic museums used to primarily document and exhibit other cultures,
museums of society present themselves as places ‘where cultures converse’ and
as intercultural meeting points. This new mission raises certain questions: How
exactly will this dialogue take place? Who will be part of it? What place will be
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22 made for the past, in particular the colonial past? 22
23 In this chapter, I seek to offer a genealogy of these new museums of society 23
24 by taking into account a paradigm shift that occurred in anthropology itself. Now 24
25 that some ethnographic museums are reconfigured into art museums (quai Branly, 25
26 Paris) or ‘museums of society’ (MuCEM, Marseille), this chapter asks whether 26
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27 these new museums are effective ways to decolonise old ethnographic collections 27
28 and to foster new relationships between Europe and the former colonies. I suggest 28
29 that one of the keys necessary to understand this museum reconfiguration in 29
30 France resides in the relationship between museums and anthropology that was 30
31 established in the second half of the nineteenth century, and in the paradigm shift 31
that marked the discipline.
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32 32
33 The idea – central to the project of the ethnographic museum – that it is 33
34 possible to reconstitute a society from its objects does not stand up any more. Most 34
35 of the museums which exhibit objects that once belonged to non-Western societies 35
36 were established in a context in which Europe dominated foreign continents; they 36
37 materialise an asymmetrical relation to these societies. What meaning do these 37
38 museums have now that the colonial era is officially over? 38
39 In our postcolonial world, it is not possible to speak on behalf of non-Western 39
40 societies, nor to represent them or their objects without being preoccupied by what 40
41 they would say about it. Since the 1980s, there has been a growing feeling that 41
42 ethnographic museums are going through a crisis. They have been accused of 42
43 presenting non-Western cultures in a reified and sometimes caricatural manner. In 43
44 response to this crisis, a majority of ethnographic museums entered into a redefinition 44

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 64 The Postcolonial Museum

1 process. Some museums chose to adopt an aesthetical approach; they converted 1

2 ethnographic objects into works of art. Other ethnographic museums opted for closer 2
3 collaboration with the communities the displayed objects came from (Ames 1992). 3
4 The very category of ‘ethnographic museum’, as a museum dedicated to the 4
5 ‘Others’ – intended here as non-Western civilisations, societies or ethnic groups – 5
6 needs to be thought through. What is the meaning today of a distinction between 6
7 ‘Us’ and the ‘Others’? What does it mean when a museum offers the possibility 7
8 to encounter the ‘Others’ and to discover their culture when members of these 8
9 communities are now French citizens (de L’Estoile 2007, 20–21)? 9
10 10
11 11
12 Ethnographic Museums and Museums of the ‘Others’ 12
13 13

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14 Let us begin by recalling a few historical milestones. Museums of ethnology and 14
15 anthropology are part of the long history of collectionism and of the exhibition 15
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of non-Western societies and their objects.1 The history of museums goes
back as far as Antiquity, where the term mouseion (museum in Latin) evoked a
temple dedicated to the muses. During the Middle Ages, relics, manuscripts and
various objects brought back from the Crusades were displayed in churches and
monasteries (Alexander and Alexander 2008, 3–5).
The cabinets of curiosities that could be found throughout Europe in the
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22 sixteenth century are commonly considered to be the prototypes of modern 22
23 museums (Impey and Macgregor 1985; Stocking 1985). Like a microcosm, the 23
24 cabinet brings the whole universe into one room. These collections of miscellaneous 24
25 objects expressed a desire to understand the world in its universal dimension that 25
26 translated into an interest in various domains: the natural world (animal, vegetal 26
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27 and mineral), Antiquity (Roman coins, sculptures, Egyptian mummies), exotic 27

28 objects brought back from Africa, the Orient or the New World, mythical creatures 28
29 and so on. Europeans’ explorations and conquests of other continents supplied 29
30 royal and private collections. But this was before ethnographic objects were 30
31 treated as a distinct category (Stocking 1985, 6–7). 31
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32 If we can see continuity between cabinets of curiosities and the first 32

33 ethnographic museums, we must admit that their objectives were different. 33
34 34
35 35
36 1  The terms ‘anthropology, ‘ethnology’ and ‘ethnography’ are used differently 36
37 to refer to the discipline dedicated to the study of man according to geographical and 37
38 disciplinary contexts. In North America, the term ‘anthropology’ is used in a broader 38
sense and encompasses archaeology, linguistics, physical anthropology, and social
39 39
and cultural anthropology. In Continental Europe, the term ‘ethnology’ is equivalent to
40 40
social and cultural anthropology, even though a growing number of practitioners identify
41 themselves as anthropologists, at least in France (de L’Estoile 2007, 15). As for the term 41
42 ‘ethnography’, it usually refers to the collection of data. ‘Ethnographic museums’ remind 42
43 us that ethnographic expeditions were central to collection-building and the establishment 43
44 of these museums. 44

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 Ethnographic Museums 65

1 Collectors from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wanted to fathom the 1
2 secrets of the Creation by collecting its strangest and rarest manifestations. On 2
3 the other hand, ethnographic museums had a clear scientific aim: to preserve, to 3
4 classify and to study the products of mankind and nature. 4
5 The first public museums emerged at the end of the seventeenth century.2 5
6 However, it was during the nineteenth century that the pairing between museum 6
7 and anthropology really took shape, at the very moment when the latter emerged 7
8 as a scientific discipline. The idea of a natural selection, validated by the concept 8
9 of evolution, justified the classification of ethnographic artefacts with animals 9
10 and other natural specimens. Ethnographic objects were seen as evidence of the 10
11 gradual evolution of mankind from the state of savagery to civilisation. Along 11
12 with the ethnological exhibition of human beings in colonial exhibitions and 12
13 world fairs, these objects both confirmed anthropology’s status as an empirical 13

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14 science and established the distinction between Westerners and the ‘Others’ 14
15 (Schildkrout 2012). 15
16 The emergence of anthropology as a discipline during the nineteenth century is 16
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tied to the museum (Sturtevant 1969; Stocking 1985; Dias 1991). Around the turn
of the twentieth century, museums were fundamental in terms of ‘the employment
of personnel and the support of field research’ (Stocking 1985, 8).3 The curators
of the first museums of anthropology, like Frederic W. Putnam at the Peabody
Museum in the United States and John William Dawson at the Redpath Museum
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22 in Canada, played a major role in the professionalisation of the discipline and 22
23 the foundation of the first departments of anthropology in universities (Browman 23
24 2002; Lawson 1999). Notably, in connection with the Pitt Rivers Museum in 24
25 Oxford, Edward Tylor, a founding figure of social anthropology, held the first 25
26 chair in Anthropology in Britain (Stocking 1987, 264–5). Franz Boas, considered 26
27 by many as the father of American anthropology, received his first position as an 27
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28 anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History (Browman 2002, 514). 28

29 Later, the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, in the form of a ‘laboratory-museum’ as 29
30 30
31 31
32 2  Museums mainly dedicated to anthropology emerged during this period: the 32
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33 Academy of Sciences of Saint Petersburg (1836), the National Museum of Ethnology of 33

34 Leiden in the Netherlands (1837), the National Museum in Denmark (founded in 1816; an 34
35 ethnographic collection was established in 1840), the Peabody Museum of Archaeology 35
36 and Ethnology in Cambridge (1866), the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in 36
37 Paris (1878), the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford (1884) and the National Museum of 37
38 Anthropology, History and Ethnology in Mexico (1909) (Alexander and Alexander 2008, 38
72; Stocking 1985, 7).
39 39
3  William C. Sturtevant has defined the ‘museum period’ in anthropology, running
40 40
from the 1840s to the 1890s, as the period when almost all research was done by museum
41 anthropologists: ‘The gathering of museum collections during fieldwork, and studying 41
42 them later on in the museum, was an important and respectable part of anthropological 42
43 research’ (Sturtevant 1969, 622). But I agree with Stocking’s assertion that ‘the great period 43
44 of museum anthropology only really began in the 1890s’ (Stocking 1985, 8). 44

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 66 The Postcolonial Museum

1 defined by Paul Rivet, had a durable influence on the field of ethnology in France.4 1
2 The French case contrasts sharply with the situation in the rest of the world, where 2
3 museum influence in anthropology declined during the inter-war years. In France, 3
4 in comparison to Britain and the United States, the central role of the museum only 4
5 began to decrease in favour of universities and research centres three decades later 5
6 (Dias 2007, 77). 6
7 The relationship between museum and anthropology is complex because it is 7
8 shaped by several factors: the initial identification of anthropology as a natural 8
9 science and the consequent influence of natural history museums; the use of 9
10 anthropology as a scientific justification of the European colonial project and the 10
11 exhibition of ‘Savages’ during the colonial and universal exhibits through the 11
12 nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century; the idea that indigenous cultures 12
13 should be recorded in an encyclopaedic fashion before their complete extinction, 13

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14 and the humanist project to prove both the unity and diversity of humankind.5 14
15 Finally, the social and artistic context influenced anthropological museums and 15
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their museographic choices, as illustrated by the aesthetic approach adopted by
the Musée de l’Homme during the 1960s, right after the opening of the Musée des
Arts Africains et Océaniens.
All in all, one could say that the golden age of the relationship between museums
and anthropology came at the moment when the main task of anthropology was
defined as the study of the material manifestations of all mankind. Ethnographic
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22 museums were in part a response to the scientific necessity to collect and study 22
23 ethnographic objects. On a theoretical level, these objects are considered to be 23
24 material expressions of the culture of a given society. Being the depositories of 24
25 huge collections, ethnographic museums stayed in place throughout the twentieth 25
26 century, even though anthropologists progressively abandoned the material study 26
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27 of societies and became more and more interested in the study of meaning, social 27
28 structures, power relationships, social practices, modes of being-in-the-world, and 28
29 so on, which can only be accessed through fieldwork. 29
30 30
31 31
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32 Museological Turn and Paradigm Shift in France 32

33 33
34 The transfer of the ethnographic collections from the Musée de l’Homme to the 34
35 quai Branly museum and the future MuCEM, as well as the closure of the MNATP, 35
36 constitute a major turn in French ethnology and an irreversible transformation of 36
37 37
38 38
4  Paul Rivet defined ethnologie as ‘the science of man in its totality’, encompassing
39 39
physical anthropology, linguistics and ethnography (de L’Estoile 2003, 342).
40 40
5 Important anthropological theories, such as evolutionism, diffusionism and
41 structuralism, have also influenced the ways ethnographic objects were classified and 41
42 presented in museums. Diffusionism was an anthropological theory that was influential 42
43 during the first half of the twentieth century. It holds that culture traits spread from one 43
44 society to another (Kuklick 2002). 44

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 Ethnographic Museums 67

1 the relationship between anthropology and museums (Dias 2007). The closing of 1
2 these two institutions that shaped French ethnology marks the end of a museum 2
3 paradigm that was more influential in France than elsewhere. This paradigm was 3
4 not only characterised by an interest in objects; it defined the way the discipline 4
5 was practised, its aims and methods that revolved around the project of an 5
6 encyclopaedic inventory of the world achieved through a systematic collection 6
7 of objects. This model was inherited from the natural sciences and the museum of 7
8 natural history: to collect, to classify and to establish natural laws. According to 8
9 this model, the purpose of ethnographic museums is to inventory cultures, peoples 9
10 or ethnic groups just as the natural history museum makes inventories of plants 10
11 and insects (de L’Estoile 2008). 11
12 The idea that it is possible to establish an inventory of the cultures of the world 12
13 rests on two assumptions: (a) cultures are seen as closed and clearly delimited 13

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14 units, and (b) cultures exist in a limited number. However, these presuppositions 14
15 were increasingly challenged during the twentieth century. Ethnography shifted 15
16 from a ‘collection model’ to an interlocution or a ‘translation model’, and from 16
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a naturalist paradigm, whose aim was the objective depiction of different ways
of life, to a translation paradigm (de L’Estoile 2008, 666). In a translation
paradigm, the goal of anthropologists is to translate for the members of their
own society the ways of life they learned while inserting themselves into another
world. From this point of view, anthropology is not the science of otherness, but
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22 a kind of knowledge that relies on the relationship between different worlds. 22
23 In other words, one can say that ethnographic knowledge is characterised by 23
24 the fact that it is gained through interpersonal relations (de L’Estoile 2003). In 24
25 a postcolonial world, ethnographic museums must acknowledge this paradigm 25
26 shift. The challenge for ethnographic museums and anthropologists today is to 26
27 find new ways to translate the results of their researches into exhibits. As de 27
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28 L’Estoile (2007) puts it: in a postcolonial word, ethnographic museums tend to 28

29 become museums of the relationship between ‘Us’ and the ‘Others’ more than 29
30 museums of the ‘Others’. The transformation of the French museum landscape 30
31 during the last decade reveals a relocation of such a boundary. 31
32 Before the relocation of their ethnographic collections to the Musée du quai 32
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33 Branly and the MuCEM, the Musée de l’Homme and the MNATP offered a dual 33
34 definition of ‘Us’: at the level of all humankind, and at a national level. The 34
35 redistribution of ethnographic collections into new museums traces new identity 35
36 boundaries. The future MuCEM illustrates the desire to foster a European and 36
37 Mediterranean sense of belonging, whereas the absence of European collections 37
38 at the Musée du quai Branly establishes a new distinction between ‘Us’ and the 38
39 non-European ‘Others’ (de L’Estoile 2007). 39
40 What place is given to the French colonial heritage in this identity 40
41 reconfiguration? One important aspect of this reconfiguration is the absence of a 41
42 museum dedicated to colonisation. In fact, it seems that the French colonial past 42
43 has become a blind spot for the national museums. The colonial heritage is either 43
44 relegated to the collections of quai Branly, or integrated into the larger theme of 44

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 68 The Postcolonial Museum

1 immigration at the Cité de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, on the site of the former 1

2 Palais Permanent des Colonies (de L’Estoile 2007). 2
3 3
4 4
5 Museums of Society and Intercultural Dialogue 5
6 6
7 In France, new museums like the quai Branly and the future MuCEM adopt a posture 7
8 of openness to cultural diversity. Thus, the motto of the Musée du quai Branly is là 8
9 où dialoguent les cultures (‘where cultures converse’), and MuCEM is presented as 9
10 a meeting place for twentieth-century civilisations. But as James Clifford brilliantly 10
11 puts it: ‘cultures don’t converse: people do’ (Clifford 2007, 16). Reflecting on the 11
12 quai Branly’s opening ceremonies, Clifford argues that even though the new museum 12
13 identifies itself with indigenous recognition movements, this attitude towards cultural 13

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14 recognition and dialogue has little impact on contemporary inequalities: ‘How, in 14
15 practice, the Musée du quai Branly might position itself to foster a “dialogue of 15
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cultures” in contemporary Paris and its embattled immigrant suburbs was a question
that haunted the opening events’ (Clifford 2007, 18). In this respect, I agree with
Mary Douglas when she says that this dialogue must take place with the people who
made the objects displayed in museums and their descendants:
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21 What an ethnographic museum should be able to do, in one way or another, is to
22 engage a conversation with the descendants of the peoples that are at the source 22
23 of this art, that created the marvelous treasures that the museum protects and 23
24 transmits to future generations. And who are they? They are the immigrants, the 24
25 refugees and the poor in our community that are not part of our Western traditions. 25
26 (Mary Douglas, translated and quoted in Price 2009, 5) 26
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27 27
28 As Price (2007) points out, preconceptions influenced by movies, television, books 28
29 and so on are not absent from the contemplation of non-Western works of art. The 29
30 pure aesthetical contemplation of objects cannot lead by itself to an intercultural 30
31 dialogue. On the contrary, it can nurture a reified imaginary of non-Western societies 31
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32 as being exotic, mysterious, stuck in time, and far different from us. The question that 32
33 remains to be asked is how the museum and its exhibitions can foster a constructive 33
34 dialogue between different groups of people that are now part of the French society. 34
35 One modest hypothesis is that temporary exhibits and cultural activities, being more 35
36 flexible than permanent exhibitions, and guided tours might offer fertile occasions 36
37 for learning, encounter and reflection about our relation to the ‘Others’. 37
38 Ethnographic objects are enmeshed in multiple histories (colonial, familial, 38
39 local, mythical). What is an adequate way to display them today in museums? As 39
40 works of art? As a testimony of the culture that produced them? Or as remnants of a 40
41 pre-colonial era? These different approaches often coexist in museums that display 41
42 non-Western cultures. But globally, there has been, since the 1920s, a growing 42
43 influence of the formalist approach over museums of ethnography (de L’Estoile 43
44 2007, 332). From this perspective, the introduction of ‘first’ or ‘tribal’ art to the 44

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1 Louvre of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is representative of a transformation in 1

2 the way non-Western objects are defined: from ethnographic objects, they become 2
3 works of art and enter the universal history of art. This transformation is seen as a 3
4 recognition of non-Western cultures and their art. But the formalist approach has also 4
5 been the target of numerous criticisms: because it neglects the history of cultures, 5
6 of the objects themselves and of local and transnational meanings (Clifford 2007), 6
7 because it says little about the social and artistic processes of creation (Bensa 2006), 7
8 and because giving an exclusively aesthetical meaning to objects that were once 8
9 collected to inform Europe about the life of foreign peoples is in itself a semantic 9
10 deviation (Dubé 2004). 10
11 L’Estoile (2007) suggests that these objects should be presented on the basis 11
12 of the complex relations that were established around them. Ethnographic objects 12
13 are not only non-Western objects in our museums; they are enmeshed in relations 13

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14 between ‘Us’ and the ‘Others’ – relations that are in constant redefinition. The 14
15 postcolonial museum, as de L’Estoile suggests, is a museum that reflects on these 15
16 relations and places history and reflexivity at its core. The postcolonial museum 16
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questions the very possibility of exhibiting cultural diversity as if it were a reality.
It encourages the public to reflect on the fact that other cultures do not exist outside
of the relation that determines difference. It asks how ethnographic objects were
collected and why, how tourism transformed cultural practices, what is the ‘museum
effect’ on the way we see non-Western societies (Alpers 1991). It is only through a
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22 reflexive effort of this kind that the possibility of intercultural dialogue can emerge. 22
23 For French philosopher and museologist Bernard Deloche (2010), this reflexive 23
24 component is a central characteristic of musées de société (‘museums of society’). 24
25 These museums – the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City, the Ethnographic 25
26 Museum in Neuchâtel, the future MuCEM in Marseille or the Musée des Confluences 26
27 in Lyon – transform at the same time what they show and the relationship with 27
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28 the public. They define themselves primarily through their public, and not on the 28
29 basis of their collections, and adopt a thematic approach to reflect on questions of 29
30 society.6 Museums of society want to escape ideology, they do not wish to transmit 30
31 absolute values, nor an eternal dogma; they transmit questions rather than answers. 31
32 In this perspective, the museum becomes an interactive ‘observatory’ of social life 32
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33 where the public are invited to question their own culture and identity (Deloche 33
34 2007, 204–5). 34
35 35
36 36
37 Conclusion 37
38 38
39 The end of the Musée de l’Homme and the opening of the Musée du quai Branly in 39
40 France mark a dual breakdown: in the encyclopaedic model with its universalistic 40
41 ambition on the one hand, and in the disciplinary paradigm on the other (Dias 41
42 42
43 6 In this regard, the Musée de la Civilisation de Québec, founded in 1984, acts as a 43
44 trail-blazer (Bergeron 2002, 63). 44

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1 2007, 76). In their new forms, museums dedicated to the ‘Others’ seem to adopt 1
2 one of the two following models: the art museum (as with the quai Branly) or 2
3 the museum of society (as with MuCEM). Dealing with questions of society and 3
4 putting the public instead of its collections at its centre, the museum of society 4
5 opens the door to a new role for the museum: reflexivity and critique. It is a role full 5
6 of promises, as it meets with the critical posture of a certain kind of anthropology. 6
7 7
8 8
9 References 9
10 10
11 Alexander, Edward P. and Mary Alexander. 2008. Museums in Motion: An 11
12 Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums, 2nd edn. Lanham, MD: 12
13 Altamira Press. 13

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14 Alpers, Svetlana. 1991. ‘The Museum as a Way of Seeing’. In Exhibiting Cultures: 14
15 The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, edited by I. Karp and S.D. Lavine. 15
16
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Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 25–32.
Ames, Michael M. 1992. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of
Museums. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Bensa, Alban. 2006. La fin de l’exotisme: essais d’anthropologie critique.
Toulouse: Anacharsis.
Bergeron, Yves. 2002. ‘Le “complexe” des musées d’ethnographie et d’ethnologie
16
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21
22 au Québec, 1967–2002’. Ethnologies 24(2): 47–77. 22
23 Browman, David L. 2002. ‘The Peabody Museum, Frederic W. Putnam, and the 23
24 Rise of U.S. Anthropology, 1866–1903’. American Anthropologist CIV(2): 24
25 508–19. 25
26 Clifford, James. 2007. ‘Quai Branly in Process’. October 120: 3–23. 26
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27 de L’Estoile, Benoît. 2003. ‘From the Colonial Exhibition to the Museum of Man: 27
28 An Alternative Genealogy of French Anthropology’. Social Anthropology 28
29 XI(3): 341–61. 29
30 ——. 2007. Le Goût des Autres: de l’Exposition coloniale aux Arts premiers. 30
31 Paris: Flammarion. 31
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32 ——. 2008. ‘L’anthropologie après les Musées?’ Ethnologie française 38(4): 32

33 665–70. 33
34 Deloche, Bernard. 2007. La Nouvelle Culture: la mutation des pratiques sociales 34
35 ordinaires et l’avenir des institutions culturelles. Paris: L’Harmattan. 35
36 ——. 2010. Mythologie du musée. Paris: Le Cavalier bleu. 36
37 Dias, Nélia. 1991. Le Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro. Paris: CNRS. 37
38 ——. 2007. ‘Le musée du quai Branly: une généalogie’. Le Débat V(147): 5–79. 38
39 Dubé, Philippe. 2004. ‘Questions d’un Huron sur le quai Branly’. MÉDIUM 1: 39
40 61–72. 40
41 Impey, Oliver and Arthur Macgregor, eds. 1985. The Origins of Museums: The 41
42 Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century Europe. Oxford: 42
43 Clarendon Press. 43
44 44

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1 Kuklick, Henrika. 2002. ‘Diffusionism’. In Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural 1

2 Anthropology, edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer. London and New 2
3 York: Routledge, 160–62. 3
4 Lawson, Barbara. 1999. ‘Exhibiting Agendas: Anthropology at the Redpath 4
5 Museum (1882–99)’. Anthropologica XLI(1): 53–65. 5
6 Price, Sally. 2007. Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly. 6
7 Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 7
8 ——. 2009. ‘Cultures en dialogue: options pour les musées du XXIe siècle’. 8
9 In Histoire de l’art et anthropologie. Paris: INHA/musée du quai Branly. 9
10 Accessed 28 October 2012. http://actesbranly.revues.org/352. 10
11 Schildkrout, Enid. 2012. ‘Anthropology – Museum-based Study’. In Encyclopædia 11
12 Britannica Online. Accessed 26 November 2012. http://www.britannica.com/ 12
13 EBchecked/topic/27505/anthropology. 13

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14 Stocking, George W. Jr, ed. 1985. Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and 14
15 Material Culture. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. 15
16 ——. 1987. Victorian Anthropology. New York: Free Press, and Oxford: Maxwell 16
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Sturtevant, William C. 1969. ‘Does Anthropology Need Museums?’ Proceedings
of The Biological Society of Washington 82: 619–49.
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 1 Chapter 5 1
2 2
3 ‘There is Not Yet a World’1 3
4 4
5 Ebadur Rahman 5
6 6
7 7
8 Prologue 8
9 9
10 The Minister of Propaganda of Gulmoher Republic, a fluid network hub of Bengali 10
11 artists, vehemently denied any constitutional doxa. He invoked a Deleuzian 11
12 trope, ‘faciality’, and likened any formal rigidity, notion of hexes or ideological 12
13 allegiance to a facialised re-enactment, inscribed on a colonial grid. The dominant 13

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14 subject, the colonisers and the slave owners, formulates the Other as a coherent 14
15 identity-formation, based on a hierarchy of incongruity from the white man’s face, 15
and redeems this idea of the identity of the oppressed in objects: art, literature,
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To quote Gilles Deleuze: ‘This machine is called the faciality machine because
it is the social production of face, because it performs the facialisation of the entire
body and all its surroundings and objects, and the landscapification of all worlds
and milieus’ (Deleuze 1996, 181). According to the Minister of Propaganda of
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22 Gulmoher Republic, if faciality is a counter-dialectical machine to maintain the 22
23 marriage of the coloniser’s apparatus of domination with his face, then Gulmoher 23
24 Republic is an erotic state, Gulmoher Republic is a perennial erection looking for 24
25 the face to penetrate and pulverise its doxic closure. 25
26 The Dominant Subject, the locus of material and spiritual signification, 26
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27 represents the colonial subject as object, in order to gain control over the world; 27
28 the coloniser – here, perhaps, it is helpful to include in our discussion what Samir 28
29 Amin calls ‘internal colonising’ – inscribing names and the category of things, 29
30 reinstates the Other as an object of his knowledge (Amin 1976). 30
31 According to its Communique #8, Gulmoher Republic is a networked viral 31
expansion loop to disrupt ‘knowledges’ and ‘histories’ by inaugurating haptic
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32 32
33 resonances in aesthetic experience. Gulmoher Republic brings the foci of the 33
34 a-subjective realm of ‘becoming’ and its primal absence of order into the field of 34
35 culture production. Gulmoher Republic has attempted to illuminate a particular 35
36 moment, when both Kapitalist-corporate time and occidental ‘History’-making 36
37 (‘History’-keeping and art-making related to these ‘Histories’, body and gesture) 37
38 have become particularly problematic in the Subcontinent. 38
39 Given the dominant academic grids, regardless of places as different as Dhaka, 39
40 Delhi or Darfur, the reception of ‘History’ invariably alludes to the dominant 40
41 ways of knowing and thinking about the history of practices – an affirmation of 41
42 the idealised, settled, schematic and totalised transcendental signifieds generated 42
43 43
44 1  Artaud (1995). 44

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 76 The Postcolonial Museum

1 by the power elites. Time and again, in its critical literature, Gulmoher Republic 1
2 reiterates these questions: Can an ‘underdeveloped’, ‘Third World’ woman be the 2
3 ethical subject of History? Can the ‘Other’ from the position of a meta-historical 3
4 outreach write history? Can the Woman/Other create art within History, or does 4
5 she have to initiate her own brand of ‘Art History’? What is art which has to 5
6 operate outside history or has to resist art-as-an-aesthetic-project in order to, as 6
7 Heidegger puts it, be-in-the-world? 7
8 8
9 9
10 The Citizens of the Womb 10
11 11
12 In a recent pop-up exhibition held in Mahasthangarh amid medieval ruins which 12
13 are the mythical site of the marriage of Behula, 11 kilometres north of the largest 13

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14 colonial mint town famous for manufacturing the best silver coins during the 14
15 Raj, Gulmoher Republic started the festivity with a mixed-double Badminton 15
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tournament for madrasa students, with Wagner playing in the background. In
between games, there were short talks and poetry readings in memory of the
brilliant hacker, Internet activist and one of the founders of Creative Commons,
Aaron Swartz, who had committed suicide a couple of days before. The show
consisted of 23 newspaper tents, an attempted replica of the nomadic Palestinian
village Bab al-Shams which had been demolished by the Israeli army even
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22 before Gulmoher Republic’s exhibition dismounted.2 22
23 The poster for the show quoted Irene Nasser, a village co-ordinator of Bab al- 23
24 Shams: ‘Our goal is to create facts on the ground, just as the military are always 24
25 creating their own facts on the ground with settlements and outposts’ (Nasser 25
26 2013). The exhibition featured photographs of leftist activists – including 26
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27 Mofakkar Chowdhury, the Secretary General of the Sarbahara Party of East 27

28 Bengal – who were kidnapped by the paramilitary force Rapid Action Battalion 28
29 in 2004 and killed in alleged crossfire. ‘We are forced to borrow and utilise a 29
30 lexicon of tools taken from the so called contemporary or post modernist corpus 30
31 to understand and absorb, and of course, to resist, contemporary art’s historical 31
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32 and discursive aggression,’ proclaims the Republic’s Minister of Propaganda.3 32

33 33
34 34
35 2 Adam Shatz, in his post ‘Opening the Gate of the Sun’, wrote: ‘At 2.30 on Sunday 35
36 morning, the Israeli army removed 250 Palestinians from Bab al-Shams, a village in the 36
37 so-called E1 corridor: 13 square kilometres of undeveloped Palestinian land between East 37
38 Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank with a population of 38
40,000. … Bab al-Shams took its name from Elias Khoury’s epic novel, published in 1998.
39 39
In the book, Bab al-Shams – “the gate of the sun” – is a secret cave where a Palestinian
40 40
fighter, Yunis, and his wife, Nahilah, meet to make love. Khoury is accustomed to this sort
41 of confusion. He did much of his research for Gate of the Sun in Lebanon’s refugee camps, 41
42 where he collected oral testimony about the Nakba. By Sunday morning they were all gone, 42
43 and Bab al-Shams had returned to the land of dreams’ (Shatz 2013). 43
44 3 Author’s interview with Gulmoher Republic’s Minister of Propaganda. 44

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 ‘There is Not Yet a World’ 77

1 Evidently all the borrowed instruments were not equally efficacious and the 1
2 difficulty of absorbing post-modernist/Historical tools could only be treated 2
3 strategically, through various ingenious culture-specific procedures; Action 3
4 Féminine was required to take into account the accumulation of the body of effects 4
5 and implicit references already instituted by other artists. Here we can recall Baruch 5
6 Spinoza or Emmanuel Lévinas, who had come upon similar difficulties; they were 6
7 often forced to use Greek signifiers – logos – in order to gain entry into ideas of the 7
8 Other who, essentially, is not Greek. Lévinas, in particular, initiated a practice of 8
9 constantly transforming strategic negotiation: a strategy that is essentially plural, 9
10 differentiated, self-conscious about and resistant to the network in which it finds 10
11 itself caught. 11
12 We clearly locate the utopian traces of the work of visionaries like Isidore Isou, 12
13 Yeves Cline, Robert Filliou, Joseph Beuys, Eikoh Hosoe, Yayoi Kusama, Tatsumi 13

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14 Hijikata, Safdar Hashmi, Chitralekha, Vivan Shundaram, Rummana Hussain and 14
15 others in Gulmoher Republic’s staging of oppositional communication contra 15
16 the statist power by questioning the paradigm of disciplinary societies and the 16
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techné of control of the individual body and the bodies of information. By cross-
connecting the power-configuration of the systems – imposed by the state and the
corporations – between the gaze of surveillance and the surveilled, the visible and
invisible, vigilance and violation, the inner and outer coherence of the temporal
fabric and the changing relationship with surveilled reality, Gulmoher Republic
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22 promoted a confrontation of the relationship between subject and object. 22
23 Without listing all 30 artists represented in the exhibition, a few examples will 23
24 suffice to signal the premise and the scope of Gulmoher Republic’s radical opening 24
25 up of a vision – contradicting the logic that continues with the anti-realist trends 25
26 of Continental philosophy obsessed with discourse, text, culture, consciousness, 26
27 power or ideas as to what constitutes reality and remains unable to forward a more 27
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28 sophisticated critique of humanity’s place in the world and of the self-enclosed 28

29 Cartesian subject vis-à-vis the total collapse of civil society, the convergence 29
30 of technological and political fascism and ecological catastrophe – towards 30
31 an ‘object-oriented metaphysics’, to use a portmanteau trope made popular by 31
32 Graham Harman (2011). 32
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33 The outstanding video installation The Citizens of the Womb by 2 Anonymous 33

34 Artists is a direct intervention in the public discourse of biopower and media: 34
35 TV news, reality show, citizens’ journalism, surveillance, rights, constitution and 35
36 legality. Documented through a series of fractured moving images, The Citizens 36
37 of the Womb inserts a different kind of presence, a presence not of the banality of 37
38 evil, but of a lacuna. The Citizens of the Womb turns an unblinking gaze on the 38
39 brutal killing of Bisyajit Das, a Hindu man living in old Dhaka, by a group of 39
40 student cadres of the ruling party, in front of the police and the media; as soon as 40
41 the onslaught of the images breaks through our ocular inhibitions, real-life footage 41
42 of another brutal murder, of Rohinga refugees, is mobilised. 42
43 Roland Barthes noted that rather than meaning coming from the objects 43
44 photographed, these induce associations of ideas and inaugurate a process of 44

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1 signification, controlled by politics, stable to a degree which allows them to 1

2 be constituted into a ready-made semiology. Power relations and the meaning 2
3 generated are a transcendental horizon which makes our reality meaningful, and 3
4 when we are deprived of this transcendental network – that is, of the fantastic 4
5 coordinates of meaning – we are no longer engaged participants in the world, we 5
6 find ourselves confronted with things in their nominal dimension. For a moment, 6
7 we see them the way they are, in themselves, independently of us – or, as Marcel 7
8 Proust put it in a wonderful formula, as the spectators of our own absence. 8
9 The photographic tableaux of 2 Anonymous Artists’ video installation short- 9
10 circuited the Bengali nationalist notions of secularism and justice. ‘Bishwajit was 10
11 bleeding profusely. And when some people tried to stop the attackers, the student 11
12 said, Bishwajit was an Islamist. Bishwajit told them, “Brother, I am not an Islamist. 12
13 I am Hindu, I am Hindu.” But his voice was feeble, and the students continued 13

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14 hitting and hacking at him,’ said Anisul, a roadside vendor. Even though no state 14
15 can truly negotiate the institution of state and the myths and fantasies organised 15
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around the idea of state, the killing of Bisyajit Das upbraids the foundational myth
of Bangladesh: a Hindu killed by Muslims in a secular state; a 24-year-old minority
tailor killed by the cadres of the ruling government party goons on 10 December,
on Human Rights Day, five days before Bangladesh’s national victory day.
Through the lens of the unconscious libidinal economy, the blood-stained shirt
on Bisyajit immediately brings to mind the shirts of the martyrs of the liberation
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22 war of 1971, dark-red heart-blood, stories of ethnic cleansing by the Pakistani 22
23 army, in Bangladesh; footage of death camps. Except that here the dynamics are 23
24 reversed: the party which led the Bengali nationalist war in 1971 has unleashed 24
25 its armed cadres on the minority citizens and common people. Such a reading 25
26 is not a simple de-sublimation, a reduction and unpacking of an ideological 26
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27 formation to its lower economic or libidinal cause; the aim of such an approach 27
28 is, rather, the inherent decentring of the status of a certain reality, which brings to 28
29 light its disavowed presuppositions and consequences. It offers a praxis of change 29
30 and redemption by revising power’s grand narrative and proposing at least two 30
31 things: (1) that historical moments should be pluralistic micro narratives plotted 31
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32 as confrontations rather than as transition, and (2) that such confrontations with 32
33 power are signalled by a functional change in the sign-system. 33
34 2 Anonymous Artists’ bold installation performed a shift in perspective and 34
35 located the agency of change in the insurgent desire that morphs into political 35
36 signifiers in the social text of contemporary Bangladesh. Of course, photograph 36
37 and film are privileged instruments of such an approach. Their purpose is not to 37
38 illuminate a standard text or ideological formation, but to foment a force of crisis. 38
39 This is the case with the second part of the video, that consists solely in the doubly 39
40 inscribed signifying material, which confronts hidden presuppositions about the 40
41 Rohinga refugees and their criminality – Rohinga being a group of people living 41
42 in the northwest Burmese-Arakan region who happen to be ethnically Bengali and 42
43 Muslim, and who in the last couple of decades have crossed the border to enter 43
44 Bangladesh to escape the atrocities of the Burmese army but, due to Bangladesh 44

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 ‘There is Not Yet a World’ 79

1 government’s policy of ‘pushback’, their legal position is tenuous in this country – 1

2 and what Durkheimian sociology calls a ‘collective representation’. 2
3 Slavoj Žižek noted that the detective in a classical genre novel or a film processes 3
4 the scene of murder as a bricolage of heteronomous elements; the connection 4
5 between the murderer’s mise-en-scène and the real events corresponds exactly 5
6 to the manifest dream content and the latent frame, or the immediate figuration 6
7 of the ‘rebus’ and its solution (Žižek 1992). 2 Anonymous Artists’ performance 7
8 subtracts the fantasy object from reality; it is not the observed reality that changes, 8
9 but the observing subject himself: Bisyajit Das is reduced to a gaze observing how 9
10 things look in his own absence. The Citizens of the Womb attempts to be the site 10
11 of absence, a place of the displacement of function between sign-systems and, in 11
12 no small way, their ruptures in the Subcontinental context and in the transaction 12
13 between past and future. It is amazing that in their statements and interviews, 13

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14 the curators of Gulmoher Republic concealed the fact that the main item of their 14
15 investigation is what Nietzsche would have called a fortgesetzte Zeichenkette: a 15
16 continuous sign-chain. Gulmoher Republic sets up a dynamic with The Citizens of 16
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the Womb, in the context of the show, to break up and re-link the chain to perhaps

This is a fairly typical mode of interpreting The Citizens of the Womb. A typical
post-structural unpacking seeks to reveal a further encrypted diminution that is
attached to the chosen signifier: the pathological might be recognisable in the
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22 visual, but only once a latent menace has been interpreted can this other sense 22
23 of the signification be exposed. Reiterating the point of the ‘speculative turn’ of 23
24 Gulmoher Republic’s recycled innovation, let us revisit a series of photos – the 24
25 photocopied faces of murdered armed revolutionaries or common people killed by 25
26 the state: mere collateral damage – with a massively ironical title, ‘Underground 26
27 chic’, that is carefully and strategically plastered on the newspaper tents. This 27
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28 offers viewers a glimpse of a very unfashionable, anti-representational politics by 28

29 placing some of the photos’ subjects – for example, Felani, a young Bangladeshi 29
30 girl killed by the Indian border guards who hung her body from a barbed-wire-post 30
31 in the no man’s land of the India–Bangladesh border – in a minefield of muted 31
32 power relations. To invoke Michel Foucault, that would be in a ‘lacunary and 32
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33 shredded enunciative field’, where fragments of the stated and the largely silenced 33
34 cut across structures and constructions of knowing (Foucault 1984). 34
35 Appropriating the theoretical apparatus and contemporary hagiography of 35
36 ‘Underground chic’ risks misreading and obliterating the radical alterity and 36
37 different political space that is magnetised, circularised and polarised by the 37
38 photographers and curators of Gulmoher Republic. It was particularly interesting 38
39 to read how the referents of ‘Underground chic’ intermingle their discourses 39
40 in a circular, musical compulsion. ‘Underground chic’ inaugurated a contrast 40
41 between ‘structuring absence’ and pure absence which allows the cartographic 41
42 signals of revolutionary subjectivity to emerge: not unlike Indian classical music, 42
43 Raga, revolutionary subjectivity hinges on an absent tonal structure or notes. The 43
44 revolutionary subject emerges when its objectal counterpart (in this case, Felani or 44

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1 other murder victims) disappears or is forcefully erased, while remaining effective/ 1

2 active in its absence. The revolutionary subject is correlative to a disappeared 2
3 object whose existence is purely spiritual or ideal. 3
4 A common thread among most of the photographers of ‘Underground chic’ 4
5 was Nan Goldin’s brand of snapshot aesthetic, but unlike Nan – a ‘monster’ in 5
6 the sense Georges Bataille (1992) utilised the word – these photographers have 6
7 not produced an oeuvre or relentlessly personal body of images that awaken 7
8 deep empathy. ‘Underground chic’ was more coldly strategic in quietly placing 8
9 itself in a lineage of ‘invisible’ artists. This leads to a comparison with Valentine 9
10 de Saint-Point, lover and model of Rodin and Alphonse Mucha, a photographer 10
11 and a futurist theoretician who composed the notorious Futurist Manifesto of 11
12 Lust (1913) and the Manifesto of Futurist Women (1912). She really begged to 12
13 be enfranchised, resisting the aggressive apparatuses of pouvoir/savoir by softly 13

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14 staging a promiscuous intertextuality and interdependency between systems of 14
15 representation at the opposite ends of the hierarchy of Western aesthetics and 15
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Put simply, ‘Underground chic’ and Gulmoher Republic’s polluted portrayal 17
of the ‘not yet’ people (and places) – to cite John Stuart Mill (2002), who 18
denounced Africans and Indians as ‘not yet’ real people ready for autonomy – is 19
that of a ‘rude’ nation, from the disorganised anterior of a Euro-eccentric culture, 20
sophisticatedly decoding and critiquing the hegemonic model and the aesthetic 21
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22 ideal(s) of the Occident that presents itself as the definitive civilisational focus. 22
23 Favouring what Deleuze (1996) calls ‘messy vitality’ over ‘obvious unity of 23
24 aesthetic reflex’, the impact of ‘Underground chic’ rests on its incommensurability 24
25 with a teleological History. Gulmoher Republic’s curatorial logic emphasises 25
26 discontinuity, the interstitial. It serves to destabilise the ‘identity politics’ rampant 26
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27 in the Indian Subcontinent since the European and North American economic 27
28 crisis and the emergence of Asia as a new economical power established a new 28
29 brand of jingoism in the region. 29
30 Recent exhibitions and the photographic Chobimela Biennial, held in 30
31 Bangladesh, showcased numerous interesting works including contributions from 31
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32 master photographers like Raghu Rai, Salgado, Shahidul Alam, Anwar Hossain 32
33 and others who are highly regarded by local viewers and artists. Gulmoher 33
34 Republic’s curatorial practice purposefully subverts these photographers 34
35 and, in general, mainstream documentary photography’s complicity with 35
36 the representation of the systemic violence of poverty. The disaster-visibility 36
37 dramatisation of social injustice and the NGO/Agency-formulated ‘positive 37
38 message’ constructions, what Gulmoher Republic refers to as a ‘poornographic’ 38
39 practice, only serve to perpetuate social injustice for the fun and profit of 39
40 the Empire and its local agents. These theoretical issues are hardly defined, 40
41 demarcated or dealt with in Bangladeshi contemporary arts with any kind of 41
42 seriousness or rigour. 42
43 The Minister of Propaganda of Gulmoher Republic stressed that arts anchored 43
44 in the unabashed depiction of Third World miserabilia or images of violence and 44

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1 frisson are not at issue here. A post-conceptual perspective on violence could 1

2 be invoked to examine how public narratives that circulate in our society are 2
3 constructed, presented and represented in the media and eventually deployed 3
4 in the general development of a macro-narrative. The minister is specifically 4
5 interested in the relationship between the private experience of an event and 5
6 the ‘official’ public story about it. This is to look into the entire cycle of any act 6
7 or event, envisaged in a system where the critique of the linear continuity and 7
8 dialectical polarity offers a revealing insight into the systematics, the registers 8
9 and the vicious curvature of our political space. In particular, this regards the 9
10 relationship between conceptual and visual aspects, the meaning of theoretical 10
11 discourse, and the role of institutions and mediators. 11
12 2 Anonymous Artists’ The Citizens of the Womb engages with and explores 12
13 the valence of ‘agency’ by imposing a palimpsestic inscription on the ‘truth’ 13

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14 of the official version of the event of the Bisyajit killing, denouncing what 14
15 Pierre Bourdieu (2012) refers to as a ‘relation of force’, and decolonising 15
16 the deterministic and moralistic position of the journalists and the media 16
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commentators. By purging the moralistic order, the genuine symbolic violence
of the social order can be staged beyond relations of force, themselves only
elements of a shifting configuration in moral and political consciousnesses.
Rafiqul Shuvo, a young but very influential artist associated with Gulmoher
Republic, views the process of ‘our’ art-making as something that is always
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22 morphing and stretching towards possibilities impossible to understand within 22
23 the framework of Occidental art history and theory. Shuvo agrees with Gulmoher 23
24 Republic’s dictum that life/art can hardly be separated with a slash or a hyphen; 24
25 for him, art is a live organism, symbiotically plugged into reality to rework its 25
26 contour and content. Shuvo insists that recruiting the Russian art group Voina 26
27 as the symbolic curators of the Berlin Biennial, the emergence of Julien Coupat 27
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28 or the ‘Invisible committee’ in France, hacker-artist group UX, fictional Elvis’s 28

29 language-speaking artists from the German and Swedish Pirate Parties, and so 29
30 on, signals the shift in the roles of both artist and curators along the borders of 30
31 art and so-called activism, and is of practical importance in saving Western art 31
32 from the irrelevance of a market-driven doom. 32
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35 Contra Post-structuralist Material 35
36 36
37 Only God Can Judge Me (2012), a recent exhibition orchestrated in an abandoned 37
38 soap factory in the industrial district of Dhaka that Rafiqul Shuvo curated and 38
39 participated in, mapped out a psycho-topology that differed from demarcating 39
40 ‘truth’ as representative of an already existing reality. It heralded an oblique route 40
41 to an emerging paradigm – still fluid and in-process, contingent on different socio- 41
42 political variants – enabling the spectator to take in not only the exotic fauna, 42
43 but also some of the topical/typical tensions and seismic turbulence of the new 43
44 magmatic ground that is constantly shifting underfoot. 44

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1 The curatorial logic of Only God Can Judge Me sought to grasp a corpus of 1
2 work (a tour d’horizon predicated on 30 slivers of narratives) which does not fit too 2
3 readily into the standard headings and ready-made ideological template/artemes. 3
4 It drew on Shuvo’s technical brilliance as a manipulator of what Duchamp referred 4
5 to as the ‘infra-mince’ and a curious rigorousness for the continual elaboration 5
6 of the contest between Shuvo’s vision and the languages of arts determined by 6
7 circumstance and factors that conceptual artists in the years 1965–75 were the first 7
8 to announce: the cultural dominance of information, the professionalisations of 8
9 artistic practices, and the application of the criteria of good design. 9
10 The inclusion of photographers, pranksters, a poet, a rapper, the International 10
11 Cricket Council’s number one cricketing all-rounder in the world, an advertising 11
12 guru from an international agency as well as a host of iconoclastic artists put into 12
13 practice a body of beliefs concerning the art-making capabilities of persons as 13

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14 distant as can be imagined from the professional art world. This immediately 14
15 initiates a tension between the context/form and the content as a semi-lattice of 15
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interconnections and overlaps of soon-to-vanish (his)stories and multiplicities of 16

Shuvo’s ‘category-confusion’ between art, craft, activism, power relations, 18

hoax, culture hacking, culture production and journalism, and his elaborate 19
layering of different temporal and syntactical planes, theatricality and obsessive 20
level of technical control carry within them the seed of their own delirium. It 21
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22 immediately leads to upbraiding orientalist hermeneutics that confuse fascination 22
23 with critique, voyeurism with empathy and profit with the exposing-of-social- 23
24 wrongs. Invoking Susan Sontag (2003) – who traced the ‘pulse of Christian 24
25 iconography’ in contemporary wartime photographs (she discussed Goya’s aimed 25
26 assaults on the sensibilities of the viewers in his The Disasters of War (1810–20) 26
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27 series, leading to a new standard in the responsiveness to suffering in the realm of 27

28 art) – on how to respond to the pain of the Other, Shuvo’s art-encounter takes on 28
29 the form of a series of assaults. 29
30 Without irony, Only God Can Judge Us parenthesises contemporary viewers’ 30
31 jadedness, scepticism, numbness and morbid fascination with the contemporary 31
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32 arts, and reveals, from within, the space of proper circumstances in which to 32
33 experience and process extreme material: form and context over content, since 33
34 anything from child pornography to a Hijra (transvestite) saga could be potentially 34
35 subversive or heroic, or more accurately, a transcendental signifier. 35
36 In the same register, Shuvo’s delirious central pieces – Golden Head, an awe- 36
37 inspiring installation by Shakhawat Hossain Razib; Marzia Farhana’s installation 37
38 Iron Rain and Mustafa Zaman’s installation immediately come to mind – 38
39 featuring insurgent subjects and freighted with surface tension that to a greater 39
40 or a lesser degree foment reinterpretation in terms of the breakdown of control 40
41 and classification, signal a possible aesthetic shift that challenges the current 41
42 market demand for the exotic and the spectacularisation of trauma/catastrophe. 42
43 A connection to a reality that demands subjective engagement and deep organic 43
44 44

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 ‘There is Not Yet a World’ 83

1 language(s) that permit(s) a different kind of ‘truth’ in a delirious vein is here 1

2 established. 2
3 Ronni Ahmmed is another artist closely associated with the cabinet of 3
4 Gulmoher Republic. His recent installation, Terrorism in Other Planets (2012), 4
5 part of an exhibition called 7 Senses at the Dhaka Art Center, enunciated 5
6 ideological imperatives of conscientious political imperatives in an anti-imperial 6
7 project. It overrode the inner-colonialism in the head-space of ‘native’ artists while 7
8 forwarding the hypothesis that art cannot be activated within a political vacuum; 8
9 the form and the language – the mode of production – of image-making is deeply 9
10 embedded and engaged with politics and particular strands of histories. 10
11 There is a massive impetus in South Asian art-making to, by and large, mine 11
12 the form, ideological credentials and language of a neo-orientalist tradition. 12
13 Once this language has been set in place and understood as the only protocol and 13

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14 methodology to invoke/depict Asian reality, it hardly matters to expose the abusive, 14
15 Corporate-Kapitalistic subtext of arts or to celebrate one or two dissenters’ work. 15
16 The criteria and the guidelines by which to judge this mode of art production 16
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pictorial regime of Empire.
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and control its critical consumption automatically stages the canonically relevant

Unlike the majority of South Asian artists, Ronni Ahmmed creatively rethinks
the coordinates of common reality and the politics which illuminates and connects
these, while maintaining the tension of his vision and constantly deconstructing
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22 his practice within a broader tendency of re-narrating the present. In a letter 22
23 reiterating his position on Terrorism in Other Planets, Ahmmed writes in his 23
24 typical telegraphic fashion: 24
25 25
26 We are living in a political world where terrorism doesn’t have a face. Terrorism 26
27 HAS BECOME A COMMODITY … It’s an essential friend to the last phase 27
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28 of capitalism. WithOUT terrifying common people it’s impossible to do good 28

29 business. THE BUSINESS OF FEAR. There’s a very thin line to separate state 29
30 and the multinational conglomerates. 30
31 31
32 THEIR works process is similar. They are chickenhawk of war, hunger and 32
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33 poverty; they make profit out of war, hunger and poverty at every stage. THEY 33
34 BELIEVE in DEVELOPMENT only because THEY SALE DEVELOPMENT. 34
35 They kill people to show they can kill anyone anytime. THEY BELIEVE IN 35
36 NATIONALISM only because THEY CAN SALE NATIONALISM. They 36
37 believe in internationalism because they cannot rule the world individually. 37
38 THEY BELIEVE IN TERRORISM because THEY need the war on terror 38
39 to make business. Occident BELIEVEs IN TERRORISM BUT THEY ARE 39
40 NOT TERRORISTs. MUSLIMS DON’T BELIEVE IN TERRORISM BUT 40
41 THEY’ve BECOME TERRORIST. Now capitalism needs its market to spread, 41
42 to avoid decay. In few years there will be no market left for capitalism in this 42
43 planet. It needs to colonise new planet for the speed of new capitalism. Occident 43
44 needs launch new capitalism in other planets like JUPITER … URANUS 44

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 84 The Postcolonial Museum

1 … PLUTO … SATAN or MARS … IT NEEDS TO HAVE NEW KIND OF 1

2 TERRORISM AND FEAR TO CONTROL THE CITIZENS OF THESE NEW 2
3 PLANETS. IN my work Terrorism in other planets, I wish to arrange a pre- 3
4 launch meeting for the interplanetary new capitalism which is a direct byproduct 4
5 of terrorism, fear and greed … Terrorism in other planets is an attempt to 5
6 understand the POST POST MODERN CANNIBALISM of the POST POST 6
7 MODERN COLONIALISM. Terrorism in other planets is ALSO a seminar of 7
8 real personalities FOR THE SAKE OF interplanetary peace. The seminar would 8
9 be presided over by George BUSH, Steven Hawkings, Gandhi, Bin Laden, 9
10 MURGI MILON (an infamous terrorist of Bangladesh), Harry Potter, James 10
11 Bond, Sherlock Homes, Rabindranath Tagore, Alexander the Great, Monica 11
12 Bellucci, Alice, Gautam Buddha.4 12
13 13

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15 Speculative Objects 15
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In 1925, Walter Benjamin, in his first appraisal of surrealism, ‘Dream Kitsch’,
making a reference to his parent’s overstuffed apartment, analysed the accumulation
of objects in his parents’ overstuffed apartment in Berlin. He correctly proclaimed
that surrealists do not perform the dream-dissection and anal-analysis of souls, but
of the objects. The most analysable feature of contesting layers of contemporary
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22 time, he contended, is a mass-produced, commonplace, kitsch-object. The kitsch- 22
23 object is: ‘the last mark of banal, the one with which we clothe ourselves in dreams 23
24 and in conversations, in order to take up into ourselves the power of the extinct 24
25 object-world’ (Benjamin 2001, 4). 25
26 The object-world is dead because its forms are fixed and frozen, although it 26
oo

27 is coded, freighted and invested with desire, power and, sometimes, rapidly and 27
28 exceedingly mutable social meaning. In ‘Dream Kitsch’, Benjamin noted that what 28
29 formerly was claimed as art ‘begins at a distance of two meters from the body’ 29
30 (Benjamin 2001, 5), through mass-produced objects and an object-world shifted 30
31 towards the individual subject, peeling away emotions, foregrounding fantasies, 31
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32 acting like mass-produced images or the montaged fragments, in that it met the 32
33 viewer halfway. Mass-produced objects, kitsch and clutter demand their right to 33
34 exist and to be decoded, for they have overridden the traditional relationship with 34
35 objects, including art-objects. For the consumer, the mass-produced object ‘offers 35
36 itself to his groping touch and finally builds its figures inside him to form a being, 36
37 who could be called der moblierte Mensch (an ornamented person or a tenant)’ 37
38 (Benjamin 2001, 4). 38
39 Objects inhabit us as we inhabit them. The object-world, the frozen world 39
40 of things, besets us in a series of networks: the complex web of relationships, 40
41 desires, past experiences, affections and so on which impact on raw perceptions 41
42 and construct our reality. Our reality becomes a purely relational grid: one can 42
43 43
44 4  Private email conversation between Ahmmed and the author. 44

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 ‘There is Not Yet a World’ 85

1 only think of reality as a network, a net cast over the entirety of objects, over the 1
2 totality of the real. The consensual reality inscribes on the plane of the real this 2
3 other plane which we call the plane of the symbolic. 3
4 Post-Structuralist linguistic theory is regularly deployed in order to assert 4
5 that elements in consensual reality may be broken down and interpreted 5
6 through a conceptual framework where the link between signifier and signified 6
7 is arbitrary and controlled by politics. In Ronni’s artwork, the pre-launch 7
8 meeting for Capitalism on other planets, the speakers George Bush or Gandhi 8
9 or Monica Bellucci are replaced by objects: a chair, name tag and a vegetable. 9
10 The relationship of the person of George Bush, and the word conveying George 10
11 Bushness, to a receiver is absolutely arbitrary: it is controlled by the hegemonic 11
12 politics of the Kapital. 12
13 Objects are not subjects, but subjects can be objectified, can be transformed 13

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14 into words, into signifiers. Signifiers stand forever, and mysteriously, beyond the 14
15 subject or the metaphysics of the essence of the subjects and objects. In seeking to 15
16 explain the relationship between objects and words, we are constantly brought up 16
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Terrorism in Other Planets
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against the limits of our knowledge of reality. 17
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22 The term ‘concept art’ was arguably first used by Henry Flint, a writer and 22
23 musician loosely associated with the Fluxus movement. In 1961 he postulated a 23
24 kind of art which consists of a ‘concept’. In 1968, Sol LeWitt famously stated: ‘the 24
25 idea is the machine that makes the art’. The conceptual artist mimics an absurd 25
26 producer who, in the heyday of the late 1960s and early 1970s, interrogated new 26
27 capitalist relationships, the fetish of information, communication technology and 27
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28 the desubjectification of production. Of course, the ground-breaking exhibitions 28

29 like Op Losse Schroeven and When Attitudes Become Forms led to widespread 29
30 protest, the cancellation of a planned Joseph Beuys exhibition and Harald 30
31 Szeemann’s resignation from the directorship of the Kunsthalle. It not only 31
32 culminated in the larger contours of the Arte Povera, Anti-Form, Conceptual 32
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33 and Land Art of the moment, but inaugurated an innovative approach of de- 33
34 emphasising the material presentation, challenging existing and future categories 34
35 and introducing new curatorial strategies. 35
36 While Terrorism in Other Planets is, theoretically, a paradoxical project which 36
37 attempts to capitalise on conceptual art’s formative tenets, the artist Ronni Ahmmed 37
38 profits from his own geographic and cultural specificities. This requires him to 38
39 concentrate his inquiries on a particular terrain: the psychogeographic, spiritual 39
40 and political Bangladesh vis-à-vis the war on terror. A pattern of hegemonic 40
41 imperialist cultural reality and a historical experience of resistance against Empire 41
42 inform Terrorism in Other Planets. In this manner, it is not just derivative or a 42
43 residual Fluxus art, but an attempt to subvert the causal fetters of consensual 43
44 reality, as proactive and insurgent subjects of history in a perpetual state of siege. 44

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 86 The Postcolonial Museum

1 While the setting of the seminar room and the designation of the speakers 1
2 and their place in the global capitalist hierarchy provide an underlying premise, 2
3 pivoted on the continual interplay of a split between reason and its Other, the 3
4 immanent terrain of Ahmmed’s sculptures made with kitchen utensils, brooms, 4
5 silverware and chess pieces glued on a chequered soccer ball, inaugurate processes 5
6 of signification that can be constituted into a ready-made semiology. These 6
7 sculptures solicit their objects in double-bind discursive regularities: in experience 7
8 by finding the form which orders experience and by raising the lived horizon of 8
9 our knowledge to the level of our discourse. 9
10 There is something that has not yet been made explicit in the above discussion 10
11 of Gulmoher Republic and its sovereign citizenry network’s creative construction/ 11
12 documentation of the upheaval in the perception of social space – their defiant 12
13 charting of the disappearance of the city as a critique of the spectacle and 13

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14 economics of late capitalism. 14
15 In his critique of late capitalism, a revolutionary French icon of 1968, Guy 15
16
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Debord, declared that the spectacle, being the reigning social organisation of a
paralysed history, is in effect a false consciousness of time. Meanwhile, Fredric
Jameson pronounced that modernism is dominated by the categories of space
rather than time. A new technological space-time, operating within a constructed
social fabric, composed/decomposed by the transfer, transit, transmission systems
and transport of transmigration networks, displaces the city in historical time
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22 and signals the unprecedented violence of a permanent wartime economism. The 22
23 human body residing in the modern city produces value, consumes spectacle, and 23
24 is conditioned by laws that are not ethical, but economical. 24
25 The Critical Art Ensemble describes the modern city as one of ‘liquescence’, 25
26 where the location of power – and the sites of resistance – rests in ambiguous 26
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27 zones without borders that are dissolved in the name of multinational greed. In its 27
28 later exhibitions, Gulmoher Republic captures the vector of the citizen of these 28
29 interrupted and nomadic cities and their hellish intestine of historical and post- 29
30 historical architectures in various forms of (de)composition, evolution and (dis) 30
31 use. It links the perimeter of a ‘biographical universe’ to an aesthetic vocabulary 31
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32 that attempts to revise the historically specific nature of the cinematic reportage of 32
33 place/space within the social field. 33
34 Gulmoher Republic’s use of Naeem Mohaiemen’s Live Through Life or Die 34
35 Trying – the photo-text combination that stages the intersection and interstices of a 35
36 radical Islamist and a leftist rally taking place on the same day – could be received 36
37 as a photo-alchemical practice in which the artist’s conscience is mortgaged to 37
38 form and demands abstraction to perform an emotional need to understand and 38
39 resist a dromologically mutated space-time. This initiates an arbitrary arena of 39
40 symbolic form which embodies a magical logic defying the violent regimes of 40
41 disciplines and economic imperatives of various stages of capitalism – directed at 41
42 the body from without – encoded and perpetuated through architecture and forms. 42
43 Space is being scrutinised and qualified by the Other’s gaze, which, surprisingly, 43
44 is not ‘historical’ or ‘politicised’. 44

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 ‘There is Not Yet a World’ 87

1 Epilogue 1
2 2
3 In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin proclaims: 3
4 4
5 Anecdote brings things closer to us in space, and allows them to enter into our 5
6 lives. Anecdote represents the extreme opposite of history – which demands an 6
7 ‘empathy’ that renders everything abstract. Empathy amounts to the same thing 7
8 as reading newspapers. The true method of making things present is: to imagine 8
9 them in our space (and not to imagine ourselves in their space). (Benjamin 1999, 9
10 1,014) 10
11 11
12 Gulmoher Republic discontinues the telos determined in advance by the macro- 12
13 narrative of history to attempt to juxtapose an anecdotal and dialogical scenario, 13

y
14 collapsing the alignment and separation between three contested, but nevertheless 14
15 entwined, palimpsest-sites of ‘arthistorylife’. 15
16 Through various performative projects, publications and constant questioning 16
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and debates, Gulmoher Republic seeks to launch, in Žižek’s parlance, an effective
critical procedure to trip the wires of the contesting strata of realities, stories,
fragments that do not usually touch – in other words, to interrogate dominant
power relations through the critical lens of artists who are constantly and
ineluctably marginalised and disavowed. Gulmoher Republic brings together the
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22 insights of a revisionist history concerning the constructedness and discursivity of 22
23 a Bengali identity with the argument that this identity’s organisation is implicit in 23
24 the negotiation of the violence of Western development and modernism. 24
25 Contra ‘history’ and by opposing history’s cumulative and progressive 25
26 mega-narrative, the networked, radically open-sourced and connected Gulmoher 26
27 Republic proposes to let the Other inhabit our space and open the narrative up to a 27
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28 heterogeneous reconstruction. This is not a monolithic power-endorsed past, but a 28

29 fluid and polyphonic present: the fabulous and hysterical history of now! 29
30 30
31 31
32 References 32
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33 33
34 Amin, Samir. 1976. Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of 34
35 Peripheral Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press. 35
36 Artaud, Antonin. 1995. Watchfiends and Rack Screams: Works from the Final 36
37 Period. Translated and edited by Clayton Eshleman and Bernard Bador. 37
38 Boston, MA: Exact Change. 38
39 Bataille, George. 1992. On Nietzsche. Translated by Bruce Boone. New York: 39
40 Paragon House. 40
41 Benjamin, Walter. ‘Dream Kitsch’. In The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological 41
42 Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, edited by Michael W. Jennings, 42
43 Brigid Doherty and Thomas Y. Levin. Translated by Edmund Jephcott, Rodney 43
44 44

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 88 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Livingstone, Howard Eiland et al. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard 1

2 University Press, 236–9. 2
3 ——. 1999. The Arcades Project, edited by Rolf Tiedemann. Cambridge, MA: 3
4 Harvard University Press. 4
5 ——. 2001. Selected Writings, 1927–1930. Translated by Rodney Livingstone 5
6 et al., edited by Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. 6
7 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 7
8 Bourdieu, Pierre. 2012. The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings. 8
9 Translated by Gregory Elliott. New York: Verso. 9
10 Debord, Guy. 1994. The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Donald Nicholson-
10
11 Smith. New York: Zone. 11
12 Deleuze, Gilles. 1996. Deleuze: A Critical Reader, edited by Paul Patton. Oxford:
12
13 Blackwell. 13

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14 Foucault, Michel. 1984. The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow. New 14
15 York: Pantheon Books. 15
16
17
18
19
20
Melbourne: re.press, 21–40.
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Harman, Graham. 2011. ‘On the Undermining of Objects: Grant, Bruno, and
Radical Philosophy’. In The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism
and Realism, edited by Levi R. Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman.

Jameson, Fredric. 2000. The Jameson Reader, edited by Michael Hardt and Kathi
Weeks. Oxford: Blackwell.
16
17
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20
21
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21
22 Mill, John Stuart. 2002. On Liberty, edited by Kathy Casey. Dover: Thrift Editions.
22
23 Nasser, Irene. 2013. ‘In Bab Al-Shams, Palestinians Create New Facts on the 23
24 Ground’. Palestine Center, The Jerusalem Fund for Education website, 24
25 28 January. Accessed 3 March 2013. http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/ 25
26 display/ContentDetails/i/37797/pid/895. 26
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27 Shatz, Adam. 2013. ‘Opening the Gate of the Sun’. London Review of Books, 16 27
28 January. Accessed 3 March 2013. http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2013/01/16/ 28
29 adam-shatz/opening-the-gate-of-the-sun/. 29
30 Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador. 30
31 Žižek, Slavoj. 1992. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through 31
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32 Popular Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 32

33 33
34 34
35 35
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38 38
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 1 Chapter 6 1
2 2
3 The Artist as Interlocutor and the 3
4 4
5 Labour of Memory 5
6 6
7 Mihaela Brebenel, Christopher Collier and Joanna Figiel 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 In conceiving this chapter, we come from a particular position, not only as 12
13 researchers, but as cultural practitioners and activists involved in a number of 13

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14 collectives struggling in relation to precarity, education and communicative and 14
15 cognitive forms of labour. We originally considered discussing a number of specific 15
examples from our collective practices. However, the ethics codes of these various
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groups specifically guard against the representation, or interlocution, of collective
activities by individual members in such contexts, in an attempt to prevent an
enclosure and valorisation of collective endeavour for individual gain. We
therefore set out to tentatively explore this seeming paradox – how the conveyance
of our testimony and memories as variously recombinant cultural, educational and
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22 migrant workers might contradict the conditions of collectivity to which we seek 22
23 to give voice. It was important to us that these considerations should themselves 23
24 be conducted collectively, although we represent only ourselves. 24
25 25
26 26
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27 Articulating Collective Memories 27

28 28
29 We develop our considerations from the founding assumption that the artistic 29
30 articulation of collective memory necessarily entails the construction of 30
31 subjectivities on a variety of scales. That is to say, for memory to be understood 31
as collective, for its expressions or annunciations to be comprehensible as such,
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32 32
33 it to some degree necessitates a shared space of subjectivity – something this 33
34 memory also produces in the act of its articulation. By considering the artist as an 34
35 interlocutor of collective memory, we therefore understand this interlocution to 35
36 mean both the articulation and production of collective subjectivity, and through 36
37 this, potentially also political struggle. 37
38 The practical deconstruction of traditional conceptions of sovereignty by 38
39 social movements across the globe suggests that subjection/subjectivation itself 39
40 presents a key point of political purchase in negotiating a radical politics of 40
41 cultural resistance. As Edward Said has noted: ‘stories are at the heart of what 41
42 explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world; they also become 42
43 the method colonised people use to assert their own identity and the existence of 43
44 their own history’ (Said 1994, xiii). 44

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 90 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Yet the decline in notions of the self-contained, self-transparent liberal subject 1

2 in so-called ‘advanced’ capitalist economies parallels the inauguration of a mode 2
3 of production founded in a necessarily continual process of subjectivation – 3
4 understood by Foucault through the notion of ‘human capital’ and articulated 4
5 in much post-workerist theory.1 Certainly in the post-Fordist context in which 5
6 we speak, the artistic interlocution of collective memory involving a certain 6
7 storytelling also mirrors one of the primary orientations of production – precisely 7
8 in this production of subjectivities. 8
9 Although all forms of production doubtless produce configurations of 9
10 subjectivity, we refer to what has been characterised as the ongoing, fluid nature 10
11 of this production within post-Fordism, occurring through what Franco ‘Bifo’ 11
12 Berardi defines as the precarious and continually recombinant fragmentations, 12
13 or fractalisations of the worker’s life (Berardi 2012, 91). In this production of 13

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14 subjectivities via the assemblage of fragments, is this interlocution – between part 14
15 and whole, individual and collective – functioning as a form of recombination? 15
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Can it thus be considered a subsumption and valorisation of memory?
To address this question, we consider the conception of the artist suggested 17
in the work of György Lukács via our definition of interlocutor, comparing it to 18
an understanding of interlocutor to be gleaned within a different context, that 19
of testimonio literature. We aim to explore how this conception might begin 20
to be transposed onto a mode of production founded in continuing subject 21
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22 construction. 22
23 We go on to consider how Guy Debord’s development of Lukács’s relation 23
24 of subjective and objective relates to an understanding of collective memory. 24
25 We further develop this through the technological ontology of Bernard Stiegler, 25
26 speculatively exploring how Stiegler’s thoughts on mnemotechnics might parallel 26
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27 Marx’s notion of the ‘general intellect’ and how the post-workerist rethinking of 27
28 this concept brings labour back into focus for us, allowing potentially a deeper 28
29 understanding of the artist’s place as interlocutor, along with her function within 29
30 contemporary capitalism’s processes of valorisation. 30
31 31
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32 32
33 The Authors of History 33
34 34
35 Addressing the idea of artist as interlocutor demands an attention to relations 35
36 between an articulation of subjectivity and the subjectivation produced. In 36
37 light of our central question around valorisation, we begin from a tradition 37
38 in Marxist aesthetics, based on Lukács’s defence of novelistic ‘realism’, 38
39 suggesting that artists function as the articulators of collective subjectivity. 39
40 Often taken polemically, as a position against which post-modernist proponents 40
41 of multiplicity might set their face, Lukács is held to interpret the realist novelist 41
42 42
43 1  We are referring here mainly, but not only, to authors like Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, 43
44 Paulo Virno, Maurizio Lazzarato and Antonio Negri. 44

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 The Artist as Interlocutor and the Labour of Memory 91

1 as articulating the objective conditions of a people, class or historical moment, 1

2 ‘bring[ing] to life those objective poetic principles which really underlie the 2
3 poetry of popular life and history’ (Lukács 1983, 56). In this position, the artist 3
4 transparently reflects the social conditions of their emergence. Successful art 4
5 has a social function, if not agency: to transcend fragmentation, reflecting the 5
6 ‘self-consciousness’ of a given historical moment, and to endure as collective 6
7 memory (Maslow 1967, 547). 7
8 Turning to a practice that might appear in some ways congruent with 8
9 Lukács’s principles, yet with a varying approach to subject construction, we 9
10 jump forward to a form of praxis emergent from Latin America in the 1960s: the 10
11 genre of testimonio writing. Containing elements of autobiography, confession, 11
12 memoir and oral history, testimonio usually entails a first-person protagonist, 12
13 recalling life-historical events in a way that often appears in conflict with 13

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14 the representational hegemony of a European and North American bourgeois 14
15 literature that persists as a legacy of colonialism, and continues under the 15
16 conditions of capitalist globalisation (Beverley 1989, 11–28). 16
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Fredric Jameson sees testimonio in contrast to an overt subjectivism, and
individualising subjectivation, found in the European novel, downplaying the
individual subject in favour of their speaking for a wider collective (Jameson 1993).
This collective, denied the opportunity to speak by the hegemony of ‘Western’
articulations, is given voice by producers of testimonio, whose own subjectivities,
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22 in our terms, become interlocutors for collective experience, enacting a collective 22
23 subjectivation. When read alongside Jameson’s wider commentary on what 23
24 he calls ‘third-world literature’, especially in relation to what he somewhat 24
25 sweepingly identifies as the erasure in such works of a ‘radical split between 25
26 public and private … poetic and political’ (Jameson 1986, 69), his observations 26
27 are somewhat complicated. He makes the over-general claim that ‘the story of the 27
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28 private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the 28

29 public third-world culture and society’ (Jameson 1986, 69). 29
30 Although he certainly over-generalises and flattens what he labels ‘third-world 30
31 culture’, we might perhaps approach such apparently crude observations in light of 31
32 his wider corpus relating to strategies of abstraction and totality in understanding 32
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33 postmodern, global capitalism. However, his identification of testimonio as offering 33

34 an example of the ‘artistic’ interlocution of memory, one with specific dimensions of 34
35 collective subjectivation, certainly appears relevant to our concerns here. 35
36 In terms of a subjective interlocutor articulating the collective memory of a 36
37 situation, we might be tempted to see testimonio as somewhat congruent with the 37
38 articulation of Lukács’s ‘objective poetic principles’.2 Likewise, we could be lured 38
39 39
40 40
2  The term ‘interlocutor’ is somewhat complicated with relation to testimonio, given
41 that it is usually used differently in this context. For example, celebrated testimonio producer 41
42 Rigoberta Menchú had Elizabeth Burgos, a Venezuelan anthropologist, act as interlocutor 42
43 for her testimony. However, we use the word in line with our already established criteria, 43
44 therefore in this instance we would identify Menchú as the interlocutor for her community. 44

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 92 The Postcolonial Museum

1 into seeing a unity of subjective and objective here that could loosely be equated 1
2 with a notion akin to class consciousness. However, to do so would be to gloss 2
3 over the important dilemma of dialectical criticism evident in Lukács, central to 3
4 the interlocutionary relation between the aesthetic and social conditions, attached, 4
5 as Jameson observes, to a crisis of historicity and its place within ‘two mutually 5
6 exclusive registers: the absolute … and the relative’ (Jameson 2007, 198). 6
7 The particularity of testimonio’s narrative appears to avoid the drive for 7
8 absolute truth, suggesting an openness in its practical subject construction. Not 8
9 contained in the monolithic figure of the proletariat, its collectivities pertain to 9
10 multiple recomposition and interpenetrating of social, religious, territorial and 10
11 kinship groupings. Testimonio then offers an individual experience of collective 11
12 struggle embodied in the figure of the testifier as a figure of solidarity. It is the 12
13 work of a more active collective subject construction, rather than attempting to 13

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14 transparently represent objective conditions subjectively and vice versa. George 14
15 Yúdice suggests such a perspective rejects the postmodern injunction on the 15
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possibility of representing alterity, the speakability of ‘otherness’ in hegemonic
discourse, simultaneously presenting a mode of representation divorced from
totalising truth claims and what, in reference to Lukács, he labels the ‘aesthetic
reflective mimesis of nineteenth-century European fiction’ (Yúdice 1991, 27).
Yet in remaining in the register of the relative and particular, could this model
ever represent a politically effective collective subjectivation?
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22 In Jameson’s reading, Lukács’s totalising ‘realism’ is a hermeneutic necessity, 22
23 standing in dialectical relation to the ‘free-play’ of signifiers offered in later 23
24 modernist and post-modernist literature. For Jameson: ‘when modernism and 24
25 its accompanying techniques of ‘estrangement’ have become the dominant style 25
26 whereby the consumer is reconciled with capitalism, the habit of fragmentation 26
oo

27 itself needs to be ‘estranged’ and corrected by a more totalizing way of viewing 27

28 phenomena’ (Jameson 2007, 211). 28
29 Recognising that Lukács was quite wrong in the 1930s, Jameson holds that 29
30 a Lukács-informed ‘realism’ holds promise for a perspective on postmodern or 30
31 ‘cultural’ capitalism. Arguably for him, its totality can operate as a negative 31
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32 concept, revealing the fragmentation of collective experience by capitalism. 32

33 Therefore it might be positioned to ‘resist the power of reification in consumer 33
34 society and to reinvent the category of totality’ (Jameson 2007, 211). 34
35 How then might we understand the artist-interlocutor’s role in articulating 35
36 collective memory – and thus constructing collective subjectivity – in such 36
37 a way that it combats the fragmenting relativity and alienating operations of 37
38 contemporary capitalism whilst also learning from testimonio in avoiding 38
39 the problematically idealistic totalising arising in the transparent identity of 39
40 subjective and objective in Lukács’s conception? If this is possible, are these 40
41 efforts necessarily recuperated into the valorising circuits of capital, ultimately 41
42 working against their intentions? 42
43 43
44 44

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 The Artist as Interlocutor and the Labour of Memory 93

1 Objects and Fragments 1

2 2
3 To reclaim this function of collective subjectivation against fragmentation, we must 3
4 contend with the problem of whether the notion of collective memory itself, and its 4
5 artistic articulation, is in some way fundamentally tied to a problematic, transparent 5
6 unity of subjective and objective. The artist-interlocutor as derived from Lukács may 6
7 depend on a subject transparently able to identify with their ‘objective’ situation. 7
8 This is approached by Debord, whose thinking serves to illuminate Lukács’s most 8
9 ‘crude error’.3 Debord shows us how Lukács’s conception of the artistic interlocution 9
10 between aesthetic and social, part and whole, is arguably founded on a problematic 10
11 reading of Hegel and thus the union of subject and object. 11
12 For Debord, following Marx, objectification is not identical with the estrangement 12
13 and alienation of capitalism: the subject must necessarily and repeatedly lose itself 13

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14 in the object in order to reform anew, to subjectivate. Lukács, however, in confusing 14
15 the relation between alienation and objectification, upheld the overcoming of 15
16 capitalist alienation as identical with an end of objectification. The Hegelian unity 16
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subjectification: op
of subject and object, universal and particular, became itself a static, universal goal.
For Debord’s open-ended dialectics, objectification is rather the necessary basis of

As Hegel showed, time is the necessary alienation, the terrain where the
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22 subject realizes himself by losing himself. In total contrast, the current form of 22
23 alienation is … spatial alienation, the society that radically separates the subject 23
24 from the activity it steals from him is in reality separating him from his own 24
25 time. (Debord 2009, 110) 25
26 26
27 Essentially, Debord is distinguishing the qualitative, temporal objectification 27
oo

28 of useful labour from the quantitative, separated and fragmented (spatial) 28

29 objectification of abstract labour, constituted by the act of exchange. This is 29
30 something specific to capitalist production, accelerated by its increasingly 30
31 ‘spectacular’ nature, in which ‘Separation is the alpha and omega’ (Debord 2009, 31
32 30). Where the general equivalent, money, had constituted one level of abstraction, 32
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33 the image is an abstraction that further occludes the qualitative – guaranteeing 33

34 equivalence, precisely through fragmentation. 34
35 Debord’s distinction between spatial and temporal objectification illustrates that 35
36 qualitative objectification is a temporal phenomenon, involving subjectification over 36
37 time. The spectacle therefore effaces temporality, and with it collective memory, 37
38 by rendering it into equivalent fragments through the image-commodity form. As 38
39 art becomes just one more specialism within the fragmentation engendered by the 39
40 spectacle, this would make the artistic interlocution of collective memory impossible 40
41 as a form of collective subjectivation. Instead the artist as specialist labourer would in 41
42 42
43 3 As he himself would later concede. 43
44 44

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 94 The Postcolonial Museum

1 this instance only serve to further fragment subjectivation, enclosing and valorising 1
2 memory, rendering it in separate, imagistic and equivalent forms. 2
3 Does this enable us to think through the earlier suggestion that the subjectivation 3
4 enacted by artistic remembering might serve as an important form of valorisation 4
5 within a post-Fordist capitalist context? Debord’s theory certainly tallies with the 5
6 observation that museums, as repositories of collective memory, have changed 6
7 from elitist and diachronic historicism towards a spectacular, synchronic space. 7
8 Andreas Huyssen ventures that in recent decades, museums (and we might 8
9 include art galleries) have increasingly shifted their emphasis from high cultural 9
10 conservation towards mass entertainment and blockbusting shows (Huyssen 1995, 10
11 13–36). If we concur with this assessment, it might be explicable as a shift in 11
12 function from historical consciousness of the ruling classes towards an equally 12
13 ideological control function, mirroring the apparent flatness and timelessness of 13

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14 the image-commodity back at captive audiences in a spectacular fashion. 14
15 Rather than lament this ‘culture of amnesia’, we can view it as symptomatic of 15
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a changing mode of production. The seeming paradox of ever-increasing museum
visitors and diminishing historical consciousness begins to make sense when seen
alongside concomitant developments in capitalist technology and mass culture.
Understanding the reorganisation of post-Fordist capitalist society through the
increasing subsumption of communicative relations – whether formal (operating
as control) or real (accelerated as an engine for the production and reproduction of
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21
22 value in itself) – may be key to understanding the valorisation of memory within 22
23 contemporary artistic practice. Must we then understand the artistic interlocutor of 23
24 memory as necessarily fragmenting memory (formerly a collective resource) and 24
25 enclosing it within capitalist relations? 25
26 Perhaps Debord remains unable to conceive fully the co-constitution of, and 26
oo

27 slippage between, ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’, along with the more fundamental 27
28 fragmented form this takes. Arguably, Debord misunderstands this alleged erasure 28
29 of collective memory in fragmentation by reversing Lukács’s error one stage on. 29
30 In equating fragmentation with capitalist alienation, rather than with objectification 30
31 as such, he actually arrives at an undifferentiated understanding of fragmentation, 31
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32 through the abstract and totalising notion of spectacle. A more nuanced interpretation 32
33 is perhaps to be found in Bernard Stiegler’s technological ontology.4 33
34 34
35 35
36 Mnemotechnics 36
37 37
38 Stiegler argues that temporal experience is founded on originary technicity. Put 38
39 simply, there would be no possibility of a collective memory, or indeed temporal 39
40 experience, without this founding co-constitution of the human and the technical. 40
41 41
42 4  Though we note Stiegler is himself involved in various practical initiatives in 42
43 rethinking the way museums and artists might serve as interlocutors for collective memory, 43
44 we limit our considerations here to his theoretical re-understanding of memory. 44

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 The Artist as Interlocutor and the Labour of Memory 95

1 Extending Husserl’s schema of primary and secondary retention, Stiegler holds that 1
2 a technical prosthesis, what he terms ‘tertiary’ memory, whilst it might confront 2
3 us as externalised in the technical object, is not only the basis of culture, but of the 3
4 experience of temporality itself (Stiegler 1998, 246). It also therefore opens up the 4
5 possibility of not only subjectivation, but collective subjectivation through time. 5
6 Tertiary memory, in the form of ‘mnemotechnics’, is transindividual and exceeds 6
7 the subject, and therefore both a Lukácsian and Debordian fragmentation, in the 7
8 sense of separation of subjects from each other and the objective conditions of their 8
9 existence. However, this is based on another more fundamental fragmentation. 9
10 Memories are exteriorised, objectified, in mnemotechnics through ‘grammatisation’. 10
11 This process involves the discretising of qualitative gestures, through repetitive and 11
12 abstracted traces, such as writing (or indeed speech) and audio-visual recordings; 12
13 even the repetitive gestures that make up labour – communicative or manual – are 13

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14 variously grammatised. Therefore, through grammatisation, fragmentation is the 14
15 very condition of culture, memory and the subject. 15
16 Different modes of technology grammatise in different ways, whilst the given 16
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form of a technical milieu produces a certain temporality. Stiegler concurs with
Bertrand Gille’s proposition that Western industrial society has functioned through
permanent and acceleratory innovation (Stiegler 1998, 15), something Marx would
place within capitalism’s inherent logic of space-time compression (Marx 1973,
539). This leads to a disjuncture between technics and culture.
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22 This division might be compared to Adorno’s identification of the critical 22
23 potential of an ‘autonomous’ art, in that arguably, such art achieves its apparent 23
24 autonomy, a loss of use-value, by being out of synch with current technical 24
25 production, reflecting instead anachronistic modes. Conversely, however, the 25
26 avant-garde also functioned as a condition and contestation of this supposed 26
27 separation of art and life, and hence from labour as properly constituted. 27
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28 Against Stiegler’s identification of this separation, perhaps we can 28

29 propose, appropriating Bürger, that when the avant-garde failed to destroy the 29
30 instrumentalised (capitalist) culture it had attacked, capitalism’s own advancing 30
31 mode of production sought to recuperate its former critical power (Bürger 1984). 31
32 Art’s formal subsumption became real subsumption with its dissolution into 32
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33 mass culture at the end of modernism proper, the avant-garde disappeared and 33
34 art became understood as ‘contemporary’ – part of the communication economy. 34
35 Therefore, realigning with the current mode of production would actually realign 35
36 art more strongly with technics, opening up its potential as what Stiegler (after 36
37 Derrida) labels pharmakon – both poison and remedy. 37
38 For Stiegler, technics is pharmakon – both a threat to, and the condition of, 38
39 individuation. Its realignment with what might formerly have been viewed as 39
40 ‘autonomous’ art can therefore be seen, not as a simple subsumption of art, but 40
41 as opening up new possibilities. In becoming integrated with the mnemotechnical 41
42 apparatus and appearing more plainly as a commodity, art attains a new 42
43 concreteness, making its labour appear more clearly as labour and throwing new 43
44 light on the peculiar temporality of production itself. 44

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 96 The Postcolonial Museum

1 The General Intellect 1

2 2
3 This relation between culture and technics is located, for Marx, in the relation 3
4 between the superstructural and the means of production (what for Stiegler 4
5 would encompass the mnemotechnical horizon). For Marx, the praxis of life – 5
6 the production of the world –simultaneously produces the producer; this praxis 6
7 can be understood as labour, or objectification, and the technical milieu seen as 7
8 the condition of its possibility. This allows us to place Stiegler within a certain 8
9 unorthodox anti-humanist reading of Marx, whereby subjectivity is externalised 9
10 within a techno-historical social milieu, this subjectivity reflecting and creating 10
11 the form of production. This milieu is something he arguably identifies with the 11
12 ‘general intellect’– an objectified store of knowledge, but also previous labour 12
13 held within the fixed capital constituting the means of production themselves. 13

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14 Engagements with Marx’s notion of general intellect have proliferated in post- 14
15 workerist discussions around the informational and communicative character of 15
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post-Fordist capitalism. It is argued that contemporary capitalism subsumes social
life, enlarging the sphere we might equate with the ‘productive power of society’s
intelligence’ (Marx 1973, 156–7) by inaugurating a system of communication
technologies in which the generation of value rests in communicative activity both
within and outside the traditional workplace.5 Whilst such theories of immaterial
labour are perhaps inadequate to deal with the complexities of global production
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22 as a whole, they are certainly useful in representing the particular field of cultural 22
23 production in the context we are addressing. 23
24 Though capital subsumes the non-work sphere of the ‘social factory’, it 24
25 simultaneously extends possibilities for communication against and beyond 25
26 capitalism, the mnemotechnical milieu containing the pharmacological potential 26
oo

27 for alternative possibilities. If the communicative, social nature of the individual 27

28 founds valorising activity, this social communicative dimension also equips 28
29 workers with opportunities for autonomously deploying such resources (Negri 29
30 1989). 30
31 For Marx, fixed capital bound up in the means of production, as a store of past 31
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32 labour, is reawakened through productive activity. The value created by the past 32
33 labour is therefore realised/preserved and transferred into the product of current 33
34 labour: ‘by virtue of the particular useful character of that labour … it raises the 34
35 means of production from the dead’ (Marx 1990, 308). What is notable in the 35
36 temporality of capitalist production is that labour extinguishes and realises the 36
37 use-value of previous labour precisely in the useful character of that labour. 37
38 Therefore, if we speculatively extend the parallel between fixed capital and 38
39 Stiegler’s mnemotechnical milieu, we can propose that it is in this way that capital 39
40 succeeds in valorising memory, the act of ‘remembering’ fulfilling the role of 40
41 useful living labour in awakening the slumbering value of the mnemotechnical 41
42 42
43 5  This formulation is apparent in, for example, the works of Paulo Virno, Maurizio 43
44 Lazzarato, Antonio Negri and others. 44

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 The Artist as Interlocutor and the Labour of Memory 97

1 apparatus. The labour of remembering valorises the memory of labour. In addition, 1

2 given the realignment of art’s mode of production with capitalist technics that 2
3 occurred with modernism’s subsumption, as suggested above, contemporary art 3
4 can no longer claim the critical autonomy of an absence of use-value. In becoming 4
5 useful labour, its function can be understood as valorising in these terms. 5
6 Furthermore, for Negri, the opposition between living and dead labour can be 6
7 recast in terms of communication and information (Negri 1989, 119). Thus we can 7
8 also propose that it is precisely the artist’s status as communicator, as interlocutor, 8
9 that both valorises, but also potentially exceeds, fixed capital. This allows us in 9
10 turn to conceive the act of remembering, and particularly its artistic articulation, 10
11 as living labour, something which begins to point towards a politics of memory. 11
12 12
13 13

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14 A Precarious Class Consciousness? 14
15 15
16 Understanding artistic remembering as labour enables us to see that not only 16
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does this entail the valorisation of collective memory, but that it also, somewhat
pharmacologically, offers a locus of political struggle. What would it mean to
attempt to withdraw, or reappropriate this labour? If the immaterial or cognitive
labour of remembering is what valorises mnemotechnologies, it does so, as Bifo
suggests, through the recombination of fragmented, precarious subjectivities. Its
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22 inverse is recomposition, orientating the construction of subjectivities through 22
23 more socialised forms of subjectivation. 23
24 Even if, contrary to Negri’s propositions, this socialised, communicative 24
25 worker cannot really be generalised, it might be held to describe the position of the 25
26 artist, and also be useful in understanding a growing class of so-called ‘precarious’ 26
27 workers for whom the artist’s often indistinct choice between an entrepreneurship 27
oo

28 of the self and auto-valorisation appears paradigmatic. This is not to argue an 28

29 artistic exceptionalism, but rather to say that social conditions brought about by 29
30 post-Fordist production now place the artist in the position of interlocutor for a 30
31 wider social situation. 31
32 In speaking and remembering for themselves, artists, as labourers, enact a 32
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33 recomposition, a qualitative subjectification: by giving testament to their own 33

34 labour, they can perhaps simultaneously articulate a ‘historical consciousness’ for 34
35 the situation in which their ‘artistic’ form of labour is increasingly forced upon 35
36 a wider class (Virno 2004). Collective memory might be given testimony, not 36
37 quite through a Lukácsian realism, but in a way that both accounts, and accepts 37
38 responsibility, for its role, as labour, in subject construction. 38
39 If, as for Yúdice, testimonio relates community experience through a 39
40 given interlocutor – not as a representative as such, but as an embodiment of 40
41 a collective remembering, involving an act of both individual and collective 41
42 identity construction and subjectivation (Yúdice 1991, 15–31) – perhaps we might 42
43 appropriate something similar into our own context. In uniting the individual and 43
44 collective, the precarious interlocutor can purport, if not to reveal the objective 44

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 98 The Postcolonial Museum

1 conditions of a given historical situation, then to recompose precarious subjectivity, 1

2 and collective subjectivity in a given group, in more socialised orientations. 2
3 3
4 4
5 References 5
6 6
7 Berardi, ‘Bifo’ Franco. 2012. ‘The General Intellect is Looking for a Body’. In 7
8 Work, Work, Work: A Reader on Art and Labour, edited by Jonatan Habib 8
9 Engqvist, Annika Engqvist, Michele Masucci, Lisa Rosendahl and Cecilia 9
10 Widenheim. Berlin: Sternberg and Iaspis. 10
11 Beverley, John. 1989. ‘The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (Testimonial 11
12 Narrative)’. Modern Fiction Studies 35(1): 11–28. 12
13 Bürger, Peter. 1984. Theory of the Avant-garde. Translated by Michael Shaw. 13

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14 Manchester: Manchester University Press. 14
15 Debord, Guy. 2009. The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Ken Knabb. 15
16
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20
Eastbourne: Soul Bay Press.

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Huyssen, Andreas. 1995. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of
Amnesia. London: Routledge.
Jameson, Fredric. 1986. ‘Third-world Literature in the Era of Multinational
Capitalism’. Social Text 15: 65–88.
——. 1993. ‘On Literary and Cultural Import-substitution in the Third World: The
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21
22 Case of the Testimonio’. Margins 1: 11–34. 22
23 ——. 2007. ‘Reflections in Conclusion’. In Aesthetics and Politics. London: 23
24 Verso. 24
25 Lukács, Georg. 1983. The Historical Novel. Translated by Hannah Mitchell and 25
26 Stanley Mitchell. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press. 26
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27 Marx, Karl. 1973. The Grundrisse. Translated by Martin Nicolaus. Harmondsworth: 27

28 Penguin. 28
29 ——. 1990. Capital. Translated by Ben Fowkes. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 29
30 Maslow, Vera. 1967. ‘Lukács’ Man-centered Aesthetics’. Philosophy and 30
31 Phenomenological Research 27: 542–52. 31
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32 Negri, Antonio. 1989. The Politics of Subversion: A Manifesto for the Twenty First 32
33 Century. Translated by James Newell. Cambridge: Polity Press. 33
34 Said, Edward. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage 34
35 Stiegler, Bernard. 1998. Technics and Time, 1: The Fall of Epimetheus. Translated 35
36 by Richard Beardsworth and George Collins. Stanford, CA: Stanford 36
37 University Press. 37
38 Virno, Paolo. 2004. A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary 38
39 Forms of Life. Translated by Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito and Andrea 39
40 Casson. New York: Semiotext(e). 40
41 Yúdice, George. 1991. ‘Testimonio and Postmodernism’. Latin American 41
42 Perspectives 70: 5–31. 42
43 43
44 44

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 1 Chapter 7 1
2 2
3 Performance in the Museum Space 3
4 4
5 (for a Wandering Society) 5
6 6
7 Margherita Parati 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 Museums in Transformation and the Emergence of a ‘Performing Model’ 12
13 13

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14 Museums are undergoing a profound institutional and cultural transformation in 14
15 the contemporary ‘age of migrations’ (Basso Peressut and Pozzi 2012, 31–7). In 15
the ‘geography of supermodernity’ (Augé 2009) in which we live, comprising
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a network of flows of information, people, objects and ideas, museums play a
connecting role in social, cultural and economic dynamics, on both the local and
global scale. The idea of the museum as the symbol of a dominant identity, which
originates from the certainties of the modern era, is questioned in the postcolonial
viewpoint (Ferrara 2012). A new perspective is emerging, which involves a
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22 necessary critical review of the cultural role played by the museum, targeted at a 22
23 society that has deeply changed and is now global, multicultural and multiethnic. 23
24 In view of its ‘new publics’, the museum has to adjust its communicative 24
25 strategies. Cultural institutions, and museums in particular, are required to ensure 25
26 accessibility of message, learning motivation and the visitor’s direct participation, 26
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27 among other new competences. In this context, the museum is seen as a medium of 27
28 communication where the dynamics of object–subject–space can be investigated. 28
29 Starting from these premises, this chapter focuses on a specific phenomenon: 29
30 the use and re-evaluation of performing language, based on direct actions and 30
31 physical experience, in museum narrations and spaces. The phenomenon 31
will be framed from a theoretical point of view, singling out the potentialities
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32 32
33 and criticalities of this language, leading to a reflection on the mechanisms of 33
34 narrative construction and memory stimulation. The specific case of art museums 34
35 and their spaces will be taken into consideration, where art itself experiences the 35
36 potentialities of such a language. 36
37 The American scholar Valery Casey focuses on the relationship between object 37
38 and subject. In her paper ‘The Museum Effect: Gazing from Object to Performance 38
39 in the Contemporary Cultural-history Museum’ (2003), she highlights the 39
40 power that museums have in communicating a message to their public. Casey 40
41 acknowledges the priority of the visual component in the impact of the exhibit: 41
42 sight is the most stimulated sense in the media reality we live in, and the scholar 42
43 takes it as the parameter to analyse the relationship between object and subject and 43
44 the ‘screen’ that is the ‘filter’ represented by the exhibition space. 44

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 100 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Casey defines three possible relational dynamics that occur between the 1
2 visitor and the exhibit, showing how they correspond to three ‘models’ in the 2
3 evolution of museum typology: from the ‘legislating museum’, as seen in 3
4 Wunderkammern and cabinets de curiosités in the seventeenth and eighteenth 4
5 century, to the ‘interpreting museum’, typical of the public museum in the 5
6 nineteenth century, which had a precise didactic purpose, to the contemporary 6
7 ‘performing museum’, where the explanatory caption of the object is replaced by 7
8 performance. In describing the latter model, the author refers to Living History – 8
9 that is, those forms of musealisation which occur through theme re-enactments, 9
10 where the non-authentic object is concretely ‘re-used’ and made known to the 10
11 visitors by means of theatre acts in which they are invited to take part. Leaving 11
12 aside the heated debates that are triggered by these re-enactment practices, it 12
13 is worth noting the importance attributed by Casey to the acknowledgement of 13

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14 the performance as an alternative and contemporary narrative ‘strategy’. The 14
15 performance replaces the object, and the visitor is actively involved on stage. 15
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Such reasoning leads to interpreting the performance as a ‘relational
strategy’ and identifying the performing museum as a contemporary model to
reflect upon. It is possible to talk about an outright change of paradigm, where
instead of mere display, the visitors’ direct experience becomes central (Bagnall
2003). The performing paradigm calls into question the relationships among
object–subject–space and the sensory modalities through which we experience
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22 contents. In this context, Pedro Gadanho, curator of the MoMA Architecture 22
23 section in New York, talks about ‘Performative Turn’ and ‘return to the user’, 23
24 referring to the contemporary social role of architecture and its design process 24
25 (Gadanho 2012). 25
26 26
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27 27
28 ‘Performing Strategy’: Potentialities and Criticalities 28
29 29
30 Performing language is seen as a strategy that is now part of the mechanisms 30
31 of narrative construction within the museum. There are various ways for 31
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32 putting such strategy into practice: from authentic theatrical representations 32

33 (the Museum Theatre phenomenon) to storytelling, to interpretations in the first 33
34 person, to artists’ performances, to hands-on strategies encouraging visitors to 34
35 touch objects (Jackson and Kidd 2011). There are many examples, from the 35
36 debated Colonial Williamsburg Museum, the largest museum in the world built 36
37 on the model of Living History, to the recent ‘hands-on stands’, as in London’s 37
38 British Museum, where visitors can touch some historical objects and ask 38
39 museum staff for information and explanations. 39
40 Recognising the increasing interest in the cultural implications of 40
41 performance, seen as essentially contested concept, Casey (2003) highlights the 41
42 potentialities and criticalities of its dynamics in the museum space. As happens 42
43 with all languages, performance is instrumental with respect to the action and 43
44 content conveyed. There are plenty of examples in history where such language 44

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 Performance in the Museum Space (for a Wandering Society) 101

1 was used for its potential of creating emotional involvement: from Classical 1
2 Tragedy to popular traditions and rites, to its manipulation for propaganda 2
3 purposes, as in the Nazi era. 3
4 On one hand, performance can be seen as a powerful form of control on 4
5 narration in the hands of a single ‘director’, running the risk of becoming pure 5
6 entertainment or manipulation. On the other, it can create a displacement effect 6
7 with respect to the observed reality, turning such language into an opportunity 7
8 to stimulate a critical awareness by working on ‘other’ communicative channels 8
9 capable of encouraging participation. By focusing on action, the performing 9
10 strategy breaks the hierarchical frontality of the relationship between visitor and 10
11 exhibit, using a kind of language which is universal by its very nature, namely 11
12 the language expressed by gestures and the body, which does not require any 12
13 translation. The real potential of triggering forms of constructive participation 13

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14 and learning, which are unique owing to the space and time in which they take 14
15 place, lies in this subversion of the elements.1 Visitors become a key element 15
16 in the development of the narration. Their physical engagements awake ‘other’ 16
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forms of memory – more intuitive and sensorial – as opposed to the merely
visual mode of exploring spaces and contents.
The performing strategy is seen to have great potential in the search for a
more inclusive and less authoritative idea of narration within museums, which
are revisited in a multicultural perspective as ‘contact zones’ for confrontation
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22 (Clifford 1997). In these spaces for encounter, body and movement are seen 22
23 as instruments to convey ideas of cultural identity (Goldberg [1979] 2011). 23
24 Moreover, the relation to the physicality of spaces and objects imposes itself as 24
25 the counterpart to totalising digitalisation: rather than denying or aiming to replace 25
26 it, it can potentially integrate with it. This language makes it possible to figure 26
27 out forms of re-activation and re-reading of the collections from different points 27
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28 of view and with different voices, forms of stratification of the narration levels, 28
29 introducing a transitional temporality into the museum. 29
30 30
31 31
32 Stimuli from the Art World and Experimentations on Museum Architecture 32
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33 33
34 Many artists are re-discovering techniques and languages typical of the artistic 34
35 practices that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s and are generically referred 35
36 to as ‘performance art’ (Goldberg, [1979] 2011). Such practices, along with 36
37 experimentation of sensorial languages involving the body, gestures and the 37
38 new media, have asserted the social and political value of making art which is 38
39 39
40 40
1  See the meaningful passage that took place in the 1970s, from behavioural
41 educational theories (behaviourist psychology) to cognitive ones (cognitive psychology). 41
42 The pioneers of such educational theories are Bruner and Piaget, who in the 1970s started 42
43 experimenting new modes of learning based on the subject’s involvement (Hooper- 43
44 Greenhill 1992; Miles and Zavala 1993). 44

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 102 The Postcolonial Museum

1 strictly linked to contemporary cultural transformations, calling into question 1

2 the museum space and its very role. Blurring the boundaries between the 2
3 conventional spaces for art and urban dimension, contemporary artistic practices 3
4 such as ‘relational art’ (Bourriaud 1998) and ‘new genre public art’ (Lacy 1995) 4
5 find in ‘performance’ a powerful media through which to activate processes of 5
6 social engagement and participation. Thanks to the adoption of such language, 6
7 questions of gender, race and migration – which have long been excluded from 7
8 institutional circuits – are allowed to enter the museum spaces. 8
9 This is the case, for example, with the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, who, 9
10 since her very first works, has turned her artistic practice into political action. 10
11 Her long-term travelling project Immigrant Movement International, developed 11
12 in collaboration with the Queens Museum of Art in New York, aims to raise 12
13 issues and a debate about what happens outside the museum space, specifically 13

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14 discussing the implications of having a migrating identity.2 14
15 The rediscovery of the provocative potential of performing language in the 15
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arts is confirmed by many exhibitions and events that have taken place during
2012. In the United States, the latest biennial exhibition of the Whitney Museum
in New York has devoted a lot of space to performers; the Dia:Beacon, Riggio
Galleries in Beacon (New York) have inaugurated a programme of performances
by contemporary American choreographers, including Merce Cunningham and
Yvonne Rainer; in winter 2012, PS1, the MoMA extension located in the Queens
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22 borough in New York, opened a ‘Performance Dome’ in the courtyard in front 22
23 of the building. 23
24 In Europe, too many museums are currently enlarging their premises to make 24
25 room for such artistic practices. This is the case, for example, at the Palais de 25
26 Tokyo in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam 26
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27 and the new Centre for Contemporary Creation, due to open in Córdoba in 27
28 early 2013. So we can ask: What spaces do these renewed artistic performing 28
29 practices require in the museum? How do they challenge not only the museum’s 29
30 programmes, but also its spatial configuration? How is museum architecture 30
31 influenced by these fluid dynamics that cross its urban fabric? 31
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33 33
34 The Tanks at Tate Modern 34
35 35
36 In July 2012, London’s Tate Modern inaugurated The Tanks, the first space to 36
37 be exclusively dedicated to performing arts in a museum at the international 37
38 level. The conversion of The Tanks, former underground containers used to 38
39 store oil for the Bankside Power Station turbines, is part of the wider museum 39
40 enlargement project being developed by the studio Herzog & de Meuron. The 40
41 Tanks are three circular spaces 30 metres in diameter and 7 metres in height, 41
42 42
43 2 See http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/486-0-Immigrant+Movement+International. 43
44 htm (accessed 6 November 2013). 44

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1 directly accessible from the Turbine Hall. Two of the three are adjacent to the 1
2 Collection Room, where works in the museum collection are exhibited: the 2
3 Commission space, which houses site-specific installations, and the Live space, 3
4 which houses alternating events, installations and performances. 4
5 The Live space, in particular, was at the heart of the Art in Action festival, 5
6 curated by Catherine Wood, Kathy Noble and Stuart Comer, which inaugurated 6
7 The Tanks last July. The festival offered an experimental programme of events, 7
8 with the precise aim of providing visitors with a space for dialogue and discussion, 8
9 questioning the role of the museum today. Before being an architectonic space, 9
10 The Tanks aim at being a social space. In the Open Manifesto published in the 10
11 festival programme, Tate Modern’s Director, Chris Dercon, states: 11
12 12
13 [The Tanks] provide an entirely new space for Tate Modern, and for museums 13

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14 internationally. … They challenge many aspects of what has been important to 14
15 museums – their collection and modes of display and archive – and ask vital new 15
16 questions of what is to be a museum in the twenty-first century. … We can think 16
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of the museum in the twenty-first century as a new kind of mass medium. Many
of the works presented in the Tanks address their audience directly, emphasising
the visitor’s own physical presence, whether that be by being part of a crowd
surrounding a performer, becoming part of a conversation, or walking through
and around an immersive installation. (Grant and Danby 2012, 2)
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23 For fifteen weeks the Live Tank functioned as a genuine experimental laboratory, 23
24 investigating the relationship between performance art, the museum and 24
25 contemporary society. It hosted events enabling artists and visitors to physically 25
26 move between the internal spaces of the museum and the external spaces of 26
27 the borough. This was the case for the exposition Inside/Outside: Materialising 27
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28 the Social, and the day dedicated to the project Across the Board: Politics of 28
29 Representation, when two African artists, Otobong Nkanga and Nástio Mosquito, 29
30 performed in the first of four planned stages of the project (London–Accra– 30
31 Douala–Lagos), due to last two years. The London event addressed reflections 31
32 on cultural identity to explore the politics of representation and their strategies 32
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33 in contemporary African art. Nkanga activated the space of the Tank with a 33
34 performance of part of her project Contained Measures, focusing on the shifting 34
35 state of intangible things such as memory and identity. Visitors were invited to 35
36 sit in front of her and discuss their impressions of photos she had previously 36
37 selected, representing, for example, African landscapes, parts of her own work 37
38 or works of art from the Tate Collection. In the evening, the Tank hosted the 38
39 performance Flourishing Seeds by Mosquito, structured as an alternation of 39
40 video projections, ‘a cappella’ songs and the spoken word, questioning our way 40
41 of understanding notions of art, Africa and the West. 41
42 In just one day, very different performances alternated in the Tank, requiring 42
43 a different layout and outfitting of the space (Figure 7.1). Whereas Nkanga was 43
44 sitting at a table with visitors moving around her, Mosquito was singing and 44

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Figure 7.1 Different layouts in the Live Tank for the project Across the 21
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22 Board. Sketches by Margherita Parati, 2012 22
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25 moving in a more dynamic way in front of the circular walls with videos projected 25
26 on them, while the public could watch sitting on the floor or on chairs placed in 26
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27 the central part of the space. 27

28 In the evocative architecture of The Tanks, where the traces of history 28
29 are visible on the ageing walls and apparent in the intense smell of oil, these 29
30 artists’ performing languages found a powerful ally in triggering visitors’ 30
31 intellectual and emotional involvement. The architects’ interventions on 31
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32 the space have emphasised its theatrical character, simply replacing the old 32
33 floor with a smooth concrete base, highlighting the centre of the space with 33
34 new pillars, and introducing the necessary equipment to ensure its potential 34
35 and fast transformation. The titles of works can be projected onto the walls, 35
36 while captions explaining the projects are simply written on paper attached to 36
37 the rough walls, as if they were advertising billboards. One of the walls in the 37
38 entrance hall is used as a big blackboard, where visitors are invited to write 38
39 comments on their experience in the space, answering some questions projected 39
40 on the wall. The Tanks are new spaces that have been ‘discovered’, where Tate 40
41 Modern is experimenting with new strategies of visitor participation, exploiting 41
42 the stimuli from art in order to investigate the relationship between performance 42
43 and museum architecture. 43
44 44

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22 Figure 7.2 Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, ‘Cavernous Agora of the Palais de 22
23 Tokyo’, 2012. Exhibition view from La Triennale 2012, Intense 23
24 Proximité, http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/7759895088/ 24
25 in/photostream/ (accessed 6 November 2013). Photograph 25
26 reproduced courtesy of Jean-Pierre Dalbéra 26
27 27
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29 Palais de Tokyo in Paris 29
30 30
31 The Palais de Tokyo in Paris also sets out to be a space of confrontation and 31
32 dialogue. The building was erected in 1937 for the Paris Art and Technology 32
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33 World Expo; it was later used as the Centre National de la Photographie and the 33
34 Palais du Cinema, and today it has been turned into a ‘district for contemporary 34
35 creation’. When the Palais was opened in 2002, it already presented itself as an 35
36 anti-museum, a laboratory of experiences, where the public’s participation and 36
37 involvement were the basis for ‘relational art’ exhibitions organised by the young 37
38 curators Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans (Bourriaud 1998; Nicolin 2006, 38
39 7–48). In April 2012, the Palais de Tokyo opened another area covering 14,000 39
40 square metres to the public, as planned in the second phase of the project by the 40
41 studio of architects Location & Vassal. 41
42 In a labyrinth of fluid spaces, where small and cosy rooms alternate with large 42
43 ones, the prevailing aesthetic is ‘the un-finished’ (Figure 7.2). The designers have 43
44 44

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1 intervened in the space by subtraction, leaving traces of its various uses over time 1
2 visible and removing only what impeded its public use. This way, a dimensional 2
3 alternation of the spaces has been enhanced, where the empty space, the space 3
4 where the actions take place, is an integral part of the logic that is implied in the 4
5 project. Light partitions in metal or polycarbonate grids and movable furniture 5
6 allow the exposition layout to be easily reconfigured as a Piranesian labyrinth with 6
7 a strong urban character. 7
8 The third edition of La Triennale, entitled Intense Proximité, which inaugurated 8
9 the extension of the Palais in April 2012, also gave ample space to the performing 9
10 arts, with a view to creating a wide array of events which are continuously 10
11 changing on the four floors of the building. The aim of the festival, whose special 11
12 Artistic Director was Okwui Enwezor, was to highlight the role of art as a means 12
13 of confrontation between cultures, as we read in the programme: ‘At its core, 13

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14 Intense Proximity is based on a series of programmatic directions on the ways of 14
15 sharing space, social experience, and aesthetic antagonism without resorting to the 15
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strident pieties of identity politics, nativist self-regard, ethnocentrism, and myths
of national cultural cohesion’ (Enwezor 2012).
According to the curators, the fragmented and episodic character of the space
made it possible to have heterogeneous works and events alternating during the
festival, housing a multiplicity of voices and languages, turning the Palais into an
active relational space.
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24 Conclusions 24
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26 The cases analysed in this chapter testify to a correlation between curatorial and 26
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27 architectural strategies while investigating the consequences of the occupation 27

28 of the museum space on the part of performing artistic practices. As Michaela 28
29 Quadraro has recently argued, with reference to the feminist theorist Elisabeth 29
30 Grosz on one hand and the curatorial practice of Thelma Golden on the other, 30
31 contemporary art practices challenge the institutional framework of the museum, 31
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32 which is thus revisited as a ‘site of intervention’ (Quadraro 2012, 128). Once it 32

33 has been affected by these stimuli, the museum turns into an experimentation 33
34 laboratory, in the perspective that Iain Chambers discusses as a possible ‘Museum 34
35 of Migrating Modernities’, ‘a location that sustains the potential, often against the 35
36 institutional intentions, for a democratic laboratory of an emerging citizenship’ 36
37 (Chambers 2012, 24). 37
38 What role can architecture play in activating these dynamics? We find some 38
39 common architectonic themes in the two cases described, as they reveal the 39
40 hybridisation of design processes in art and architecture. In both cases, a clear 40
41 need for flexible spaces emerges, in order to guarantee quick and continuous 41
42 transformation. This leads to the integration of technological equipment in the 42
43 ceilings or walls. In these new spaces, which are deliberately left rough and 43
44 unfinished, the void plays a crucial role. These new areas are activated through 44

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1 actions, and then left void again. With its ephemeral nature, performance introduces 1
2 a rhythm into both museum space and museum time. 2
3 The architectonic language emphasises the primary elements of the space: 3
4 floors, walls and ceilings. In designing additions, the architects focused on the 4
5 surface geometry and their treatment, leaving the traces of previous uses of the 5
6 space visible. Over these permanent and pre-existing layers, the exhibition design 6
7 comprises flexible and removable furniture that, like a scenography, supports the 7
8 gestures of both the artist and the visitor. 8
9 The Tanks and the Palais are examples of projects of the reuse of existing 9
10 architectures. The same strategies, once again stimulated by the need to give room 10
11 to artistic performing practices, also lie at the basis of the brand-new project by 11
12 architects Nieto and Sobejano for the Centro de Creación Contemporánea, due to 12
13 open in Cordoba in 2013. Here again the design of the space has to support the 13

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14 simultaneity of the production and exploitation of the works of art. The building 14
15 plan comprises hexagonal rooms which can be connected to create different 15
16 paths. These rooms are covered by concrete panels and lit from above. The idea 16
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underlying the project is the ‘urban bazaar’ as a place of encounter and exchange.
Is it possible to take stimuli from such recent experimentations in art
museums, their programmes and their new spatial character, and apply them to
other typologies of museums, to set up a different confrontation with visitors?
These new interiors are open to urban practices of socialisation. In this sense, they
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22 are performative spaces, where architecture plays an active role in stimulating 22
23 dialogue and participation. They suggest a new possible field of investigation, 23
24 based on the relationship between performance and cultural spaces. 24
25 25
26 26
27 References 27
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28 28
29 Augé, Marc. 2009. Non luoghi: introduzione a un’antropologia della surmodernità. 29
30 Translated by Dominique Rolland. Milan: Eleuthera. 30
31 Bagnall, Gaynor. 2003. ‘Performance and Performativity at Heritage Sites’. 31
32 Museum and Society 1(2): 87–103. 32
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33 Basso Peressut, Luca and Clelia Pozzi, eds. 2012. Museums in an Age of Migrations: 33
34 Questions, Challenges, Perspectives. Milan: Politecnico di Milano DPA. 34
35 Bishop, Claire. 2004. ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.’ October 110: 51–79. 35
36 Bourriaud, Nicolas. 1998. Esthétique Relationelle. Dijon: Les Presses du Réel. 36
37 Casey, Valerie. 2003. ‘The Museum Effect: Gazing from Object to Performance in 37
38 the Contemporary Cultural-history Museum’. Paper presented at the seventh 38
39 International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting (ICHIM 03), Paris, 8–12 39
40 September. Accessed 10 March 2013. http://www.valcasey.com/thesis/thesis_ 40
41 effect.html. 41
42 ——. 2005. ‘Staging Meaning: Performance in the Modern Museum’. The Drama 42
43 Review 49(3): 78–95. 43
44 44

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1 Chambers, Iain. 2012. ‘The Museum of Migrating Modernities’. In Cultural 1

2 Memory, Migrating Modernities and Museum Practices, edited by Beatrice 2
3 Ferrara. Milan: Politecnico di Milano DPA, 13–32. 3
4 Clifford, James. 1997. ‘Museums as Contact Zones’. In Routes: Travel and 4
5 Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Boston, MA: Harvard University 5
6 Press, 188–219. 6
7 Enwezor, Okwui. 2012. ‘Intense Proximity, Art as Network’. Accessed 10 March 7
8 2013. http://www.latriennale.org/en/intense-proximity-art-network. 8
9 Ferrara, Beatrice, ed. 2012. Cultural Memory, Migrating Modernities and Museum 9
10 Practices. Milan: Politecnico di Milano DPA. 10
11 Gadanho, Pedro. 2007. ‘Architecture as Performance.’ Dédalo 2 (March): 25–9. 11
12 ——. 2012. ‘The Performative Turn’. Shrapnel Contemporary, 24 February. 12
13 Accessed 10 March 2013. http://shrapnelcontemporary.wordpress. 13

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14 com/2012/02/. 14
15 Goldberg, RoseLee. [1979] 2011. Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. 15
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London: Thames and Hudson.

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Grant, Simon and Charles Danby. 2012. The Tanks Programme Notes. London:
Pure Print Group.
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. 1992. Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge.
London: Routledge.
Jackson, Anthony and Jenny Kidd. 2011. Performing Heritage: Research, Practice
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22 and Innovation in Museum Theatre and Live Interpretation. Manchester: 22
23 Manchester University Press. 23
24 Lacy, Suzanne. 1995. Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. San Francisco, 24
25 CA: Bay Press. 25
26 Macdonald, Sharon, ed. 2006. A Companion to Museum Studies. Malden, MA and 26
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27 Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 27
28 Marvin, Carlson. 1996. Performance: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. 28
29 Miles, Roger and Lauro Zavala, eds. 1993. Toward the Museum of the Future: New 29
30 European Perspectives. London: Routledge. 30
31 Nicolin, Paola. 2006. Palais de Tokyo: sito di creazione contemporanea. Milan: 31
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32 Postmedia Books. 32
33 Quadraro, Michaela. 2012. ‘Museum Practices of Resistance’. In Cultural 33
34 Memory, Migrating Modernities and Museum Practices, edited by Beatrice 34
35 Ferrara. Milan: Politecnico di Milano DPA, 121–9. 35
36 Serota, Nicholas. 1996. Experience or Interpretation: The Dilemma of Museums 36
37 of Modern Art. London: Thames and Hudson. 37
38 38
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 1 Chapter 8 1
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3 Museo Diffuso: Performing Memory in 3
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7 Viviana Gravano 7
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12 This chapter investigates the relationship between some practices of contemporary 12
13 art and what has been called ‘difficult heritage’. It is divided into two parts: in 13

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14 the first, I define what I mean by difficult heritage; in the second, I cite some 14
15 significant examples of memorials, museums, and artistic practices. 15
The term ‘difficult heritage’ comes from an important essay by Sharon
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particularly arduous. In her own words:
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Macdonald. With this expression she identifies places that conserve the memory
of a traumatic event whose transformation into spaces of collective memory is

‘difficult heritage’ – that is, a past that is recognised as meaningful in the

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22 present but that is also contested and awkward for public reconciliation with a 22
23 positive, self-affirming contemporary identity. ‘Difficult heritage’ may also be 23
24 troublesome because it threatens to break through into the present in disruptive 24
25 ways, opening up social divisions, perhaps by playing into imagined, even 25
26 nightmarish, futures. (Macdonald 2008, 1) 26
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27 27
28 Three fundamental terms emerge from this text: memory, the present and identity. 28
29 Macdonald speaks of places that lead to possible conflicts within the community 29
30 that inhabits them. The memory these places carry with them has a powerful 30
31 relationship with the re-reading that they can operate in the present. The first 31
question is: How do certain places become bearers of images of the past that
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32 32
33 ‘concerns’ us today in the sense of the term used by Georges Didi-Huberman: 33
34 ‘what we see has a value and a life inasmuch as it is connected to us. The division 34
35 between what we see and what concerns us is therefore ineluctable’ (Didi- 35
36 Huberman 1992, 9; my translation). 36
37 When memory appears in the form of a place or an image, it can have a value 37
38 not just as a simple ‘object’ to be observed, but also as a subject that looks back 38
39 at us. In the latter case, it consigns us to an ethical position and makes us feel part 39
40 of a place, an inhabitant rather than a passer-by, an actor and not just a spectator. 40
41 The sites of difficult heritage imply a negotiated relation with those who watch, 41
42 involving us even when we negate them or wish to forget them. They resemble the 42
43 damnatio memoriae the Romans inflicted upon those who, having betrayed Rome, 43
44 were forced into oblivion. The physical erasure of the figure of the traitor from 44

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1 public representation in sculpture and painting produced an absence that actually 1

2 maintained the eternal memorial of that betrayal. The ‘apparent’ erasure generates 2
3 the constant confirmation of that which was, and even more so, of that which is. I 3
4 propose to associate this quality of erased places with the Benjaminian concept of 4
5 das Jetzt (‘the now’). This has nothing to do with the temporality of the image, but 5
6 with its pertinence to all the possible todays. 6
7 Macdonald draws our attention to how the recognition of certain places 7
8 of memory evokes the re-reading of national narratives, and impacts on the 8
9 construction, or deconstruction, of the foundational myths of that narration. 9
10 The presence of a concrete visualisation of a traumatic past through images, 10
11 places and practices aids recognition of the possible re-emergence of this past 11
12 in contemporary tales of identity. In the spoken language, certain expressions, 12
13 deriving from definitions formulated in the past, come to be actualised in the 13

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14 present. In this sense, certain forms of current representations are the offspring of 14
15 the erasure and repression of images of the past. The constant concealment of the 15
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place and symbols of power, of sites of oppression and violence, produces a void
of visual images that, following the principal of damnatio memoriae, generates
a mythologised and highly imaginative permanence. The rescissio actorum, or
the actual destruction of the work, produces a punishment that guarantees eternal
presence for a total absence. The erasure of difficult memories implies the
impossibility of a collective re-elaboration. It creates a myth of absence, leaving
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22 space for the transformation of the figure of the ‘erased’ into a victim of history. 22
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25 Processes of Collective Removal in Italy 25
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27 I would like to cite a recent and significant example of this process in Italy. 27
28 Bolzano, a city in Alto Adige with a very strong separatist tradition, is composed 28
29 of two linguistic communities, one German and one Italian. There are also other 29
30 minorities such as Ladino, and this leads to constant conflicts. The city was mostly 30
31 constructed in the fascist period, and many of its public buildings date from that 31
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32 period. In piazza Tribunale, a fascist building features an enormous bas-relief with 32

33 Benito Mussolini on a horse. The sculpture was realised in 1939 by the sculptor 33
34 Hans Piffrader, but only placed on the building in 1956, many years after the 34
35 fall of the regime. In 2011, an international call was announced for a work of art 35
36 that would ‘disempower’ the fascist sculpture. The desire for such an intervention 36
37 began with a strong local debate regarding the necessity of activating a process 37
38 of ‘disempowerment’ of the urbanised, architectural and artistic inheritance of 38
39 fascism in Bolzano. 39
40 The term ‘disempowerment’ seems very problematic, because it presupposes 40
41 that the images in themselves are bearers of an evocative force, of a signifying 41
42 power: the memory not of an abuse, but of power and potency. Over five hundred 42
43 applicants responded to the call. The five winners received prize money, but the 43
44 local institutions, in accordance with the Berlusconi government in power at 44

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1 that time, did not give the go-ahead for any of the selected works. After bitter 1
2 debates, it was decided to cover the bas-relief with a large frosted pane of grey 2
3 glass. A perfect monument ‘in hiding’ in reality exalted the force of that hidden 3
4 and therefore ‘unimaginable’ image. Erasure exalts the absence, transforms the 4
5 executioner into victim of the damnatio memoriae, and intentionally excludes the 5
6 possibility of a public, shared re-elaboration. In Bolzano, the projects proposed by 6
7 artists and architects would have initiated a process of negotiation with an image 7
8 that confronts the past of the city and Italy and poses questions linked to the new 8
9 images of the neo-fascist right, constructed thanks to the repression of the memory 9
10 of the Mussolini era. 10
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13 The Power of a Difficult Heritage 13

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15 Now I would like to raise a second question regarding the political value of the 15
16 definition of difficult heritage. According to what criteria can a given place can 16
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be ascribed to the difficult heritage, and who has the authority for deciding?
Does a difference exist between those places recognised unanimously as difficult
heritage, thanks to the worldwide ‘notoriety’ of the trauma they have given rise
to, and those places that have profoundly determined the narratives of identity at
the local level, but have not gained an international standing? Can the location
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22 of a conflict, of a dictatorship, or of a traumatic event be considered as difficult 22
23 heritage even if it has not received unanimous worldwide condemnation or not 23
24 been an object of study? 24
25 I believe that this is a fundamental question in understanding whether 25
26 the definition of difficult heritage can be seen as a form of discrimination in 26
27 mainstream academic research. Macdonald discusses the difficulty of considering 27
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28 the places of slavery in the United States, in common with many places marked 28
29 by European colonialism, as difficult heritage on the part of those countries that 29
30 welcome research on the subject. Research, and consequent actions, linked to the 30
31 memory of Nazism or the regimes in the ex-Eastern European bloc, receive an 31
32 immediate position in this context, with a uniformity of readings determined by 32
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33 those who wield academic power: universities in Europe and the United States. 33
34 With this, I do not wish to negate the extreme importance of the contributions on 34
35 memory concerning the Nazi period and the dictatorships of Eastern Europe. The 35
36 question is: does the selection of places, and the subsequent choice of actions to 36
37 be promoted there, denote a form of political power used to decide a priori those 37
38 sites that necessitate ‘recollection’? 38
39 We also need to pose a question regarding the resources and channels of 39
40 research that are fundamentally concentrated in Europe and the United States, 40
41 or in the countries that are politically closely associated with them. I can give an 41
42 example in this respect. Brazil, under the presidencies of both Lula de Silva and 42
43 Dilma Roussef, and Argentina, with Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as president, 43
44 both appointed State Commissions to prosecute crimes committed during the 44

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1 brutal military dictatorships. This initiated a process of recognition and critical 1

2 reactivation of the places of detention and torture and the palaces of dictatorial 2
3 power. Immediately after the fall of the dictatorships, the governments, under the 3
4 influence of the United States, rapidly erased or re-converted these places so as 4
5 to suppress all memories of their past. It is surely problematic that while research 5
6 centres on the United States – the country that financed the advent of these 6
7 dictatorships and has taken a very clear and forthright approach to the heritage 7
8 of Nazism – it has been much more ambiguous about the difficult heritage in 8
9 countries of Central and South America. 9
10 This example poses an essential question: in indicating an area of difficult 10
11 heritage, one is also implicitly indicating a question of identity linked to whoever 11
12 belongs to that area, but how can this link between personal identity and local 12
13 history be made explicit? The position of the researcher, artist or activist who has 13

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14 taken on the operation of recollection is essential to the narration of identity. By 14
15 saying this, I do not mean that only those who live in a given place can tackle the 15
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complex questions linked to difficult heritage. I believe that the variables in the
negotiations between territory, memory and community require consideration of
the identity of the personal and academic narrative of the researcher.
I say this because in elaborating this chapter, I know that I am not only a
scholar of new genre public art based in Italy. I know that I am a woman from
Southern Europe, born in 1961, with a history of political militancy in the Italian
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22 Communist Party, linked to the story of my uncle, a socialist who was deported 22
23 to Auschwitz, and have witnessed as a young intellectual the horrible war in 23
24 Yugoslavia, the invasions of Iran and Iraq, and many other catastrophes. Thus my 24
25 definition of difficult heritage begins in Nazi Germany, and passes boldly through 25
26 fascist Italy, colonial Europe and imperialist America. Like any scholar who deals 26
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27 with these themes, I must begin from a critical and vigilant analysis of the origins 27
28 of my research. 28
29 I would like here to recall Walter Benjamin, who in 1939, speaking of epic 29
30 theatre, cited Brecht with regard to the role of the actor: ‘The actor must show the 30
31 event, and he must show himself: naturally he shows the event by showing himself 31
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32 and he shows himself by showing the event’ (Benjamin 2003, 11). The calling into 32
33 question and constant deconstruction of academic power remains essential in not 33
34 superimposing our research requirements to the demands of the community with 34
35 and for which we work. 35
36 Now I would like to address the question of places as living testimonies of 36
37 the topographies of memory. I would like to begin from the concept of museo 37
38 diffuso, rendered variously in English as ‘open-air museum’ or ‘diffused museum’, 38
39 or again ‘dispersed museum’, or finally ‘disseminated museum’. The expression 39
40 actually emerged in Italian museum literature, and in origin did not refer to difficult 40
41 heritage. The dispersed museum designates the myriad of common goods diffused 41
42 throughout the territory that a policy of recuperation and valorisation tends to treat 42
43 as a unit. The dispersed museum is intended to transform a territory of everyday 43
44 transit into an open-air museum itinerary. 44

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 Museo Diffuso: Performing Memory in Public Spaces 115

1 The initial definition of the museo diffuso was by the architect Fredi Drugman 1
2 in a seminar given at Milan Polytechnic in 1980, published in the Italian magazine 2
3 Hinterland (Drugman 1982, 21). Since then, the scholar has often returned to the 3
4 need to see the museum as a place of society: the dispersed museum implies a 4
5 close link between alterity and familiarity, the usual and the extraordinary, the 5
6 everyday and the unique. Thus the dispersed museum comes to be seen as an open 6
7 form which proposes a deep relation between territory, community of inhabitants 7
8 and visitor. 8
9 The two binomials proposed by Drugman – treated dialectically, not as 9
10 dichotomies – seem appropriate when speaking of difficult heritage. There exists a 10
11 sense of familiarity towards certain places, but also a strong sense of estrangement 11
12 with respect to its previous use. Quite often these sites are on the daily routes of 12
13 inhabitants of the community or standard tourist routes, but the emergence of a 13

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14 repressed memory can reveal what is exceptional. The everyday nature of the place 14
15 becomes a unique experience because it challenges all our identity narrations. The 15
16 place as interruption of flux of habit, as interval in the usual perception, evokes 16
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Paul Klee’s vision of the angel of history described by Walter Benjamin: ‘His eyes
are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread …. His face is turned toward
the past’ (Benjamin 2006, 392). The unexpected ‘survival’ of the past manifests
itself in the guise of shock (Benjamin 2006, 320), of interruption, of ‘interval’
in the sense Benjamin attributes to Baudelaire in the modern metropolis. The
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22 anti-monumental artistic practices must search for a modality that impedes the 22
23 re-absorption of that place in the past and renews the shock in an epic way. Still 23
24 speaking of the epic theatre of Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin writes: 24
25 25
26 Like the pictures in a film, epic theatre moves in spurts. Its basic form is that 26
27 of the shock with which the single, well-defined situations of the play collide. 27
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28 The songs, the captions, the lifeless conventions set off one situation from 28
29 another. This brings about intervals which, if anything, impair the illusion of the 29
30 audience and paralyze its readiness for empathy. These intervals are reserved for 30
31 the spectator’s critical reaction – to the actions of the players and to the way in 31
32 which they are represented. (Benjamin 1969, 153) 32
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34 In my view, the role of the sites of difficult heritage involves the perception of 34
35 these places as territories of shock that interrupt a pacific, conflict-free vision of 35
36 the space in which we live. But it can also offer each one of us the opportunity 36
37 to articulate a critical vision with respect to their representation. In Benjamin, 37
38 the concept of the cutting pushes the audience towards a vision that asks for its 38
39 continuous, personal and cultural reassembly of historical ‘facts’. The testimony 39
40 of places does not appear like a sacralised conservation that easily leads to a 40
41 dangerous fetishisation, but presents itself as an ‘interval’. Each break in the urban 41
42 fabric of today can become an interval, forcing critical replacement between actions 42
43 produced accidentally and those that can be hosted voluntarily. Twentieth-century 43
44 European culture tends to use the monument and the memorial as commemorative 44

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 116 The Postcolonial Museum

1 places, producing not a shock, but a mimesis of the landscape, becoming not a 1
2 space, but a place. As the sociologist Michel de Certeau writes: 2
3 3
4 At the outset, I shall make a distinction between space (espace) and place (lieu) 4
5 that delimits a field. A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with 5
6 which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes 6
7 the possibility of two things being in the same location (place). The law of the 7
8 ‘proper’ rules in the place: the elements taken into consideration are beside 8
9 one another, each situated in its own ‘proper’ and distinct location …. A place 9
10 is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of 10
11 stability. A place exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, 11
12 velocities, and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersection of mobile 12
13 elements. It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed 13

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14 within it. Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, 14
15 situate it, temporalise it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflicting 15
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programs or contractual proximities. On this view, in relation to place, space
is like the word when it is spoken, that is, when it is caught in the ambiguity
of an actualization, transformed into a term dependent upon many different
conventions, situated as the act of present (or of a time), and modified by the
transformations caused by successive contexts. In contradistinction of the place,
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21 it has thus none of the univocity of a ‘proper’. (de Certeau 1984, 117)
22 22
23 The monument as a ‘place’ conserves an integrity that identifies it with a past event 23
24 that it has hosted and condemns as impossible the action in the present. The space 24
25 exists only as it is practised in action. The monumentalisation, the practices of 25
26 textual reconstitution of the sites of the great tragedies, make them invisible since 26
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27 their mere nomination transforms them into places. The celebration of memory 27
28 that must be kept alive actually crystallises the event recalled in one fixed image, 28
29 localised and therefore unimaginable in the present. 29
30 In the book Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, 30
31 featuring photographs taken by a Sonderkommand inside the extermination camp 31
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32 at Auschwitz, Georges Didi-Huberman proposes the question of the possibility 32

33 and impossibility of representing the horror of the camps: 33
34 34
35 In order to know, we must imagine for ourselves. We must attempt to imagine 35
36 the hell that Auschwitz was in the summer of 1944. Let us not invoke the 36
37 unimaginable. Let us not shelter ourselves by saying that we cannot, that we 37
38 could not by any means, imagine it to the very end. We are obliged to that 38
39 oppressive imaginable. It is a response that we must offer, as a debt to the words 39
40 and images that certain prisoners snatched, for us, from the harrowing Real of 40
41 their experience. So let us not invoke the unimaginable. How much harder was 41
42 it for the prisoners to rip from the camps those few shreds of which now we are 42
43 trustees, charged with sustaining them simply by looking at them. Those shreds 43
44 are at the same time more precious and less comforting than all possible works 44

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1 of art, snatched as they were from a world bent on their impossibility. Thus, 1
2 images in spite of all: in spite of the hell of Auschwitz, in spite of the risks taken. 2
3 In return, we must contemplate them, take them on, and try to comprehend 3
4 them. Images in spite of all: in spite of our own inability to look at them as 4
5 they deserve; in spite of our own world, full, almost choked, with imaginary 5
6 commodities. (Didi-Huberman 2012, 3) 6
7 7
8 A little further on, the author says: ‘to remember one must imagine’ (Didi-Huberman 8
9 2012, 30). I would prefer to see the phrase translated from the French with the 9
10 verb ‘recollect’ instead of ‘remember’ in order to better emphasise the difference 10
11 between memory and remembrance, where one word refers to the preservation of 11
12 memory and the other implies an active re-emergence of this memory. 12
13 I always found the French scholar’s appeal to abandon ethical terms such as 13

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14 ‘unimaginable’ or ‘unspeakable’ when referring to the tragedy of the Nazi death 14
15 camps illuminating. The impossible representation does not just pass through 15
16 the destruction or concealment of difficult heritage, but paradoxically, often 16
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passes through the monuments to its memory, understood as the petrifaction
of memory, like a dead language rather than a spoken language. This brings
to mind some photos taken by American photographer Margaret Bourke White
on entering the Buchenwald concentration camp, immediately after the arrival
of the Allies. Some pictures from the series ‘German civilians are forced by
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22 American troops to bear witness to Nazi atrocities at Buchenwald concentration 22
23 camp, mere miles from their own homes, April 1945’, which she produced for 23
24 the magazine Life, were never published. In these photographs, the true subject 24
25 was not the mountain of corpses or the people reduced to skin and bones, but the 25
26 eyes of the German citizens that were ‘forced’ to see what meaning the camps 26
27 had. Those images carry a level of obscenity, so much so that Life published the 27
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28 shocking images of mountains of corpses piled up like ‘objects’, but not those 28
29 in which the protagonist is the gaze of someone who does not want to look. The 29
30 omission from Life established a criterion of unwatchability. The horror of the 30
31 published images constructs such an impact that we are all from that moment not 31
32 allowed to look because what you see is literally ‘unbearable’. 32
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33 The erasure of the images of those who are ‘forced’ to look would have 33
34 set a dangerous precedent, a kind of invitation to watch, a real possibility, a 34
35 tangible watching/seeing that those images would no longer have relegated to 35
36 the sphere of the ‘unwatchable’. In a series of unpublished photographs, Bourke 36
37 White omits even the object of the gaze and shows only the contrite and even 37
38 ‘disgusted’ faces, looking at something horrible elsewhere. That group of 38
39 viewers, of bystanders, is the potential European audience, who could identify 39
40 with them, who could be ‘forced’ to watch. They are the live witnesses, but 40
41 they are not survivors. The inability to identify with the survivor authorises the 41
42 ability to say, ‘Only those who have lived it could never understand,’ and so 42
43 this absolves everyone else from having to understand. The German citizens 43
44 standing in front of the horror perpetrated right on their front doorstep could 44

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1 be us, we might have been the same witnesses. To erase that kind of witness 1
2 is equivalent to still being able to say that everything that has happened will 2
3 always be ‘unimaginable’. 3
4 Returning, then, to the question of the testimonial value of ‘places’, I would 4
5 like to conclude by saying that in Italy, the celebrative monumentalisation of 5
6 many places of difficult heritage, and contrary to the literal erasure of the true 6
7 space of the criminal action of fascism and Nazi fascism, has produced a sort of 7
8 imagination gap. Today, much of right-wing culture, and not only that of the far 8
9 right and pro-Nazis, re-proposes an iconography linked to the fascist period that 9
10 is gaining ground in de-figuring the period. The lack of a real geographical and 10
11 topographical reworking of fascism in Italy has turned that time into a sort of 11
12 ghost without place, which is countered by a celebratory rhetoric that relegates 12
13 many events to the designation of ‘civil war’. Suffice it to say that of the three 13

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14 detention and torture centres of the Nazi fascist period in Rome, the Pensione 14
15 Jaccarino, the Pensione Oceano Pacifico and the Pensione on Via Tasso, only 15
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the latter has a Museum of Liberation. The Pensione Jaccarino has returned to
its normal activities as a hotel, and the Pensione Oceano Pacifico is home to the
headquarters of Radio Radicale. Both are commemorated only with a marble
plaque that dryly records that on this spot the infamous group of Nazi fascist
torturers called the Banda Koch once operated.
The Italian colonial past has had a similar fate, represented as a sort of comic
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22 defeat, a failed attempt from the start. This stereotyped representation of the 22
23 picaresque Italian who approaches the colonial enterprise in an almost burlesque 23
24 manner, has in Italy prevented the circulation of the numerous archival images 24
25 showing the violence and killings perpetrated in the colonies from the Unification 25
26 of Italy to the fascist period. The result is the current strongly racist iconography 26
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27 that permeates popular communication, from advertising to the cinema, denoting 27

28 a total lack of reworking of colonial iconography. Such repression produces the 28
29 belief that the colonial era does not ‘concern’ the Italian culture of today. 29
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32 Berlin: Difficult Heritage Tourism 32

33 33
34 I would now like to mention some examples of best practices through interventions 34
35 closer to the spirit of the new-genre public art working within a vision that 35
36 have produced approaches that are site-specific-oriented and, in my view, very 36
37 interesting. 37
38 Berlin is home to a dispersed museum in the city concerning the memory of the 38
39 Nazi period and the wall. After German reunification in 1990, Germany had to deal 39
40 with the thorny issue of the memory connected to the Nazis, but also the resulting 40
41 division after the Second World War into the Federal Republic of Germany and the 41
42 German Democratic Republic. Crossing Berlin, the capital of the reunified nation, 42
43 we find many places of German difficult heritage that are turning into spaces of 43
44 remembrance. I will not dwell here on all the initiatives, many are already well 44

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1 known, but I will focus on three examples that suggest three approaches that I 1
2 consider interesting. 2
3 A red brick line on the ground marks the old path of the Berlin Wall that was 3
4 built in August 1961 and demolished in November 1989. Walking in the city now, 4
5 it is easy to step on and cross over this stretch without noticing. In two places in 5
6 the city, the presence of the wall returns in an obvious way: Bernauer Strasse, 6
7 where the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer has been built (the Berlin Wall Memorial), 7
8 and Checkpoint Charlie, with its museum, where the apparatus of the border of 8
9 the period of the wall was left. I would like to start by distinguishing these two 9
10 initiatives, proposing how museum practices can produce two very different 10
11 approaches with respect to the same difficult heritage. Discussion has already 11
12 begun around difficult heritage tourism, the current tendency to make some areas 12
13 that are difficult for the memory of the local community into places organised for 13

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14 a kind of tourism that tends to become mass tourism. 14
15 In his book The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting a German History in the 15
16 Urban Landscape (1997), Brian Ladd clearly reconstructs the market that was 16
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built around pieces of the Berlin Wall after its fall, fundamentally related to non-
German collecting. The wall, after its almost complete material destruction, fell
into the fetishisation trap of which I spoke earlier. In Berlin, the Berlin Wall
Memorial and Checkpoint Charlie Museum have seen two very different reactions
to this urgent matter. The Berlin Wall Memorial is defined on the official website
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22 as Gedenkstätte, the exact German equivalent of the English term ‘memorial’. The 22
23 term derives from the Latin term for memorial, memorialis, essentially indicating 23
24 a book, and therefore a written statement that will leave a trace – but it also means 24
25 a historian. The word alludes to the need to conserve memory, but fundamentally, 25
26 the ability to transmit it. 26
27 The diffused construction of the Berlin Wall Memorial works with the 27
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28 possibility of recollecting the wall, in a site-specific way, leading the visitor along 28
29 a physical path that consolidates the relationship between space, memory and 29
30 viewer. The audio, video and textual columns along the path of the wall at Bernauer 30
31 Strasse seem to be a contemporary version of the techniques of recollection from 31
32 Giulio Camillo Delminio’s ancient Theatre of Memory in the sixteenth century: a 32
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33 series of aedicules that housed the tableau vivant of each record to be transmitted 33
34 and preserved. Each information point of the Berlin Wall Memorial materialises 34
35 an aspect of past life with the wall standing, in a sequence of daily life that is 35
36 topographical rather than chronological. 36
37 The memorial avoids monumentalisation and fetishisation. All elements of 37
38 the display used were fragments of the hidden structure that nurtured it and 38
39 kept it alive, and are shown still buried, surrounded by a fence and explained in 39
40 detailed plaques. This form of archaeological excavation permits a locating of 40
41 these ‘objects’ in the past, but at the same time makes them present as traces. 41
42 The exposing of what did not appear as evident invites a desacralisation of the 42
43 paradoxical tendency to turn the wall into ‘urban furnishing’ in order to preserve 43
44 a fragment as cult object. At the memorial on Bernuer Strasse, the path of the 44

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1 1
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22 Figure 8.1 ‘A parked bike’. Photograph by Viviana Gravano, 2012 22
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24 24
25 wall is marked by a long sequence of rust-coloured pipes driven into the ground, 25
26 which do not block the sight of the wall and clearly outline the path of that part 26
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27 of the wall. 27
28 On my last visit to Berlin, I took a picture of a bike attached to one of these 28
29 poles (Figure 8.1), and I think this parked bike is more eloquent than any words I 29
30 might offer. The memorial, on the one hand, activates reflection, forcing a critical 30
31 intervention, and on the other, recreates a familiarity with the place, reconstructs 31
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32 a presence that is not monumental and therefore unapproachable and untouchable. 32

33 The intervention at Checkpoint Charlie seems to be something entirely 33
34 different. In front of the museum of the same name, the first in Berlin to document 34
35 the history of the wall, on the old border crossing point between East and West 35
36 Berlin, a sentry surveillance point with sandbags was erected. A young actor, 36
37 dressed as a member of the American or Russian military, allows tourists to take 37
38 his picture. A little farther on, across the street, the remnants of the wall, graffitied 38
39 by famous street artists, make it easy to overlook the political significance of 39
40 the remaining wall as it is transformed into a fetishised and commercial object. 40
41 Checkpoint Charlie is, in my view, the perfect representation of erasure by 41
42 evidence. Beyond the removal implemented through the concealment of traces, 42
43 there is another form of removal that is just as dangerous: that which happens 43
44 through a pop sacralisation of difficult heritage places, under the false pretence of 44

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1 popular dissemination. It diffuses any conflict of identity in the narratives of the 1

2 present, and promotes the aesthetic mythologising of the past in a nostalgic key. 2
3 The trace does not appear as a theatre of memory, but only as a performance of a 3
4 pacified present that formalises places to make them workable on the surface. It is 4
5 no coincidence that Checkpoint Charlie has failed to foster any relationship with 5
6 the inhabitants of that portion of the city: it has become a sort of Berlin Wall theme 6
7 park in the middle of the city, for the benefit of tourists. 7
8 I would like to cite another example, present in Berlin but also spread 8
9 throughout Europe: the Stolpersteine (stumbling stones or blocks) of the German 9
10 artist Gunter Demnig. These stones, now deposited in their thousands in all of 10
11 the countries that had citizens deported to the Nazi death camps, are small brass 11
12 blocks of 10 × 10 cm, with a simple engraving of the name, date of birth, date of 12
13 deportation, and when known, the date of death for each victim of Nazi-fascism. 13

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14 Each stone is set in the pavement in front of what was once their residence at the 14
15 time of their deportation. Each stone costs 120 euros and can be funded by private 15
16 or public institutions, but also by an individual citizen. 16
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The stones cause the mild perceptual shock I mentioned above. They are brief,
sharp breaks in our flow, they are simple interventions, small but heavy in the
course of our daily journey. They are objects that show an unexpected corporeality
in their present rendering of who disappeared.
In the recent press conference held for the installation of new stones in Rome
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22 at the Casa della Memoria (‘Memory House’), Mr Veneziani, in telling the story 22
23 of the people to whom the stones he financed were being dedicated, told us that 23
24 in the branch of his family which was deported, all his relatives were killed, from 24
25 the youngest grandchild to the grandparents, and left no trace behind at all in life. 25
26 He explained how his cousin was sold to Nazi fascist Italians by his neighbour for 26
27 5,000 lira, and hence deported. The stones become an uncomfortable presence, 27
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28 similar to the looks omitted from the photographs of Margaret Bourke White – 28
29 because they are on the sidewalk in front of our houses, because they are inserted 29
30 into a road we walk down every day, because they are the trace not only of 30
31 extermination, but of indifference. 31
32 Their widespread diffusion not only functions as a collective recollection, but 32
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33 invites an assumption of responsibility for the individual. The laying of stones 33

34 triggers a strong debate, which in some countries has led to their disfigurement 34
35 and attempts to remove them. At the time of installation, the community that 35
36 receives them performs a ceremony, to which all those who knew the remembered 36
37 people are invited. Public institutions and individuals are invited to participate 37
38 economically and organisationally in the installation of the stones. It is not by 38
39 chance that in the extermination camps the bodies were burned in ovens, that the 39
40 militaries of Central and South America threw bodies into the sea, that there are 40
41 desaparecidos, the victims of dictatorships, but also the name for many prisoners 41
42 in US prisons. The erasure of the body prevents the incorporation of the victim 42
43 within those who remain. How can you identify with those who no longer exist, 43
44 not because they died, but because they are missing? The stumbling stones restore 44

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1 a physical, tangible experience to those who never returned from the death camps 1
2 by giving them a body that hurts us, touches us every time we place a foot near 2
3 one of those stones. 3
4 4
5 5
6 Conclusion 6
7 7
8 I would like to close my remarks by citing two works by contemporary artists who, 8
9 in two different contexts of difficult heritage, have raised critical issues of great 9
10 urgency. The first work is the Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History by Ian 10
11 Alan Paul, an artist and theorist based in the California Bay area.1 The museum is 11
12 actually a website that shows an imaginary museum installed at the well-known 12
13 US prison at Guantanamo Bay, the setting of episodes of torture and violations of 13

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14 human rights, after its hypothetical closure by order of President Barack Obama. 14
15 On the homepage of the museum website you can read the welcome message 15
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from the Director: ‘The Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History, located at
the former site of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba, is an institution
dedicated to remembering the U.S. prison which was active between 2002 and
2012 before it was permanently decommissioned and closed.’
The museum houses an Exhibition Hall and a Research Centre dedicated to all
the victims of the detention centre: the Tipton Three Exhibition Centre, dedicated
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22 to the collective name of the British citizens from Tipton, England who were held 22
23 in the extrajudicial detention in Guantanamo, and Jumah al-Dossari Centre for 23
24 Critical Studies, dedicated to the citizen of Bahrain tortured in Guantanamo. On 24
25 entering the website, visitors find instructions to arrange their visit, to become 25
26 supporters of the museum, and even to apply to be artists-in-residence. 26
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27 The work of Ian Alan Paul suggests a theme that I raised at the beginning of 27
28 this chapter: Who decides what constitutes difficult heritage, and according to 28
29 what criteria? When Guantanamo is truly abandoned, if ever, will it be a place 29
30 that will become a field of research for difficult heritage, since it is a place where 30
31 all human rights were suspended? We ask ourselves the question: Shy was such 31
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32 a prison installed at Guantanamo, in that paradoxical bay on the island of Cuba 32

33 still owned by the United States? We might respond by saying that precisely a 33
34 place that imposes a traumatic presence, a continual interruption of the democratic 34
35 flow of the United States, was placed outside the framework of possible random 35
36 passers-by or US citizens. The location’s problems of trace and memory are bound 36
37 to affect everyone, even in those countries that have drawn the boundaries and 37
38 criteria of difficult heritage. I would ask again whether a place like Guantanamo 38
39 can be transformed virtually, even before its ‘end’, into a difficult heritage? 39
40 At the beginning, I said that difficult heritage deals with those places 40
41 that produce conflicts in the construction of identity narratives of today, and 41
42 42
43 1 See the museum’s website: www.guantanamobaymuseum.org (accessed 6 43
44 November 2013). 44

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1 Guantanamo is one of these. Deterritorialising Guantanamo by turning it into a 1

2 virtual site which recollects what still takes place within its walls can be a new 2
3 frontier of artistic intervention in difficult heritage, can become a master key, a 3
4 battering ram even, to open those doors not into the past, but into our own present. 4
5 One of the works in the Guantanamo Bay Museum is by an Italian-American 5
6 artist based in San Francisco, Fiamma Montezemolo. Her work reproduces the 6
7 now famous orange jumpsuits of the Guantanamo prisoners along with part of the 7
8 book If This is a Man by the Jewish-Italian writer and Auschwitz survivor Primo 8
9 Levi. Through headphones, you can hear the sounds of the revolving door along 9
10 one of the passages of the US–Mexico border. The artist explains her work on her 10
11 website: 11
12 12
13 In this piece, an imaginary prisoner/migrant – with an unidentified nationality 13

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14 – leaves only a trace of the intolerable of his experience. The trace is made of 14
15 a note/poem and a sound. The poem is by Primo Levi, written after surviving 15
16 the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The sound has been collected in the border 16
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between Mexico and the USA where there are metallic doors that abruptly divide
the Americas in two. The image of the poem, written on the now infamous
orange prisoner uniform, along with the sound, establishes an analogy between
the attempt to forcedly create boundaries, categories and aliens on the basis of
violence.2
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23 The proximity between the memory of the Nazi death camps, perceived through 23
24 the words of Primo Levi, the prisoners subjected to torture at Guantanamo, through 24
25 the use of jumpsuits, and the thousands of migrant victims, dead or disappeared at 25
26 the US–Mexico border through the use of sound, combines, in a dazzling ‘today’, 26
27 the traces of a possible definition of difficult heritage that, extending beyond 27
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28 academic boundaries, arrives at being true fieldwork. 28

29 I believe that this work by Fiamma Montezemolo is the perfect closure to my 29
30 paper, as it sought to problematise the concept of difficult heritage by inviting a 30
31 consideration of the possibilities emerging from site-specific-oriented research, 31
32 and the role of the players as necessary components in true remembrance. 32
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33 33
34 34
35 References 35
36 36
37 Benjamin, Walter. 1969. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: 37
38 Shocken Edition. 38
39 ——. 2003. Understanding Brecht. London: Verso. 39
40 ——. 2006. Selected Writings: 1938–1940, edited by Howard Eiland and Michael 40
41 W. Jennings. Harvard, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 41
42 42
43 2 Source: http://www.guantanamobaymuseum.org/?url=montezemolowork (accessed 6 43
44 November 2013). 44

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1 de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University 1
2 of California Press. 2
3 Didi-Hubermann, George. 1992. Ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regarde. Paris: 3
4 Les éditions de Minuit. 4
5 ——. 2012. Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz. Chicago, 5
6 IL: University of Chicago Press. 6
7 Drugman, Fredi. 1982. ‘Il museo diffuso’. Hinterland V(21/22): 24–5. 7
8 Ladd, Brian. 1997. The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting a German History in the 8
9 Urban Landscape. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 9
10 Macdonald, Sharon. 2008. Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in 10
11 Nuremberg and Beyond. New York: Routledge. 11
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 1 Chapter 9 1
2 2
3 Mining the Museum in an Age of Migration 3
4 4
5 Anne Ring Petersen 5
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9 9
10 Since the 1970s, the meta-discursive activities commonly described as 10
11 ‘institutional critique’ have established a strong artistic tradition for detailed 11
12 analysis of networks of power and systems of representation. Institutional 12
13 critique often uses museological practices to question the ways in which 13

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14 museums rewrite history through the politics of collecting and displaying 14
15 (Corrin 1994, 4–7). It has proved capable of revealing the cultural mechanisms 15
at play in museums and other institutions that market or display art and cultural
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artefacts (González 2008, 67). There is now ample evidence that one of the
most efficient means of deconstructing Western museums as cultural spaces is to
invite a critical artist to stage an intervention, thereby temporarily transforming
the relatively static display of a permanent collection into a living archive and
an innovative exhibition context. As Lisa Corrin remarks, these types of projects
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22 and installations have formed a veritable movement that could be described as 22
23 ‘Artists Look at Museums, Museums Look at Themselves’ (Corrin 1994, 1). The 23
24 question is: can they also help us envision what a ‘postcolonial museum’ could 24
25 be, and what it could do? 25
26 A well-known example is the American artist Fred Wilson’s groundbreaking 26
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27 installation Mining the Museum at the Maryland Historical Society in 1992. It was 27
28 based on a collaboration which allowed the artist to interview the staff and to have 28
29 open access to the collection, including the objects and histories that had been 29
30 buried in the museum’s basement. Mining the Museum brought to light previously 30
31 untold histories of African-Americans and Native Americans in Maryland. It thus 31
supported the Historical Society’s efforts to make its collections more relevant
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32 32
33 to greater Baltimore’s mainly African-American population (González 2008, 33
34 83). Another remarkable characteristic of Mining the Museum was that it did 34
35 not involve artworks by the artist, but a curatorial selection and reinstallation of 35
36 items from the collection in a way that invited visitors to reconsider the items on 36
37 display, as well as the ideological function of the exhibition itself as a knowledge 37
38 technology that taught particular interpretations of history, thereby also invariably 38
39 suppressing others. In this case, the suppressed histories were the histories of 39
40 slavery and racism in America. Wilson’s critical, revisionist intent was succinctly 40
41 summed up in a vitrine labelled ‘Metalwork 1793–1880’ that displayed a slave’s 41
42 iron shackles alongside the vitrine’s usual display of ornate silver goblets and 42
43 elegant decanters (Figure 9.1). Similarly, the room entitled ‘Modes of Transport, 43
44 1770–1910’ revealed a Ku Klux Klan hood resting in the sheltered space of a pram, 44

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Fred Wilson, ‘Metalwork 1793–1880’, from Mining the Museum:
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22 An Installation by Fred Wilson, The Contemporary Museum and 22
23 Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, 1992–93. Silver vessels 23
24 in Baltimore Repoussé style, 1830–80; slave shackles, c. 1793– 24
25 1872, made in Baltimore. Makers unknown. Photograph © Fred 25
26 Wilson, reproduced courtesy of the artist and the Pace Gallery 26
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28 28
29 contextualised by an early twentieth-century photograph of African-American 29
30 nannies with white children in prams (González 2008, 88). 30
31 The British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare’s installation Garden of Love at 31
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32 the quai Branly Museum in Paris in 2007 was not an artistic intervention in a 32
33 collection like Wilson’s. Yet it had a similar disruptive effect on the institution’s 33
34 display policies because it exposed how colonial history permeates European 34
35 ethnographical museums. The quai Branly Museum features indigenous art, 35
36 cultures and civilisations from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. Seventy 36
37 per cent of its objects were ‘acquired’ between 1880 and 1939, at the height of 37
38 European Imperialism (Müller 2007b, 26). It is telling of the interplay between 38
39 Shonibare’s installation, the permanent collection and the museum environment 39
40 that one art critic thought that Shonibare was ‘doing a Fred Wilson’ (Jones 2007). 40
41 Shonibare was prompted to use the French ‘picturesque garden’ to launch an 41
42 institutional critique from the museum garden, which is made up of plants not 42
43 indigenous to Europe. He linked the site-specific garden motif to his own fascination 43
44 with the lavish lifestyle of the aristocracy in eighteenth-century Europe, when 44

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22 Figure 9.2. Yinka Shonibare, ‘The Confession’, installation from Garden 22
23 of Love, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, 2007. Two mannequins, 23
24 Dutch wax printed cotton textile, shoes, coir mattins, plinth, 24
25 artificial silk flowers, 158 × 178 × 170 cm. Photograph by Patrick 25
26 Gries. Image courtesy of the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New 26
27 York and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London 27
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30 members of the ruling class lived in unimaginable luxury while revolution was 30
31 brewing around them. The three tableaux entitled ‘The Confession’ (Figure 9.2), 31
32 ‘The Crowning’ and ‘The Pursuit’, which constituted the core elements of Garden 32
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33 of Love, staged this pre-revolutionary moment by paraphrasing paintings of loving 33

34 couples from the series The Progress of Love, painted by the quintessential Rococo 34
35 painter Jean Honoré Fragonard in 1771–73. 35
36 Contrary to Fragonard’s silk-clad, rosy-cheeked aristocrats, Shonibare’s figures 36
37 wore Rococo costumes made of African-print fabrics. Originally produced by 37
38 Dutch colonisers for an Indonesian market, these fabrics found costumers in West 38
39 African colonies, and later became an emblem of African identity and pan-African 39
40 nationalism. As a result, they are impregnated with colonial and postcolonial 40
41 connotations, which Shonibare exploits in his efforts to make viewers understand 41
42 that coloniality is a constituent of modern Western societies, and not something 42
43 external to them. Moreover, the figures’ heads were removed, as a warning that 43
44 a bloody revolution may also be imminent in our contemporary world, with 44

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1 its increasingly uneven distribution of wealth (Müller 2007a, 14). To link his 1
2 exhibition with the museum garden, Shonibare placed his tableaux in a faux garden 2
3 labyrinth, its artificiality enhancing the ‘artful naturalness’ of the exotic garden 3
4 outside (Gilvin 2009, 168). The labyrinth mimicked the experience of wandering 4
5 in quai Branly’s garden and collections. It also offered multiple perspectives on the 5
6 same tableau via carefully placed windows from the passageways into the spaces 6
7 with the figures. Sometimes visitors could even see, but not enter, other exhibition 7
8 spaces (Gilvin 2009, 169–70). In this way, the ethnographical museum was put 8
9 into critical perspective as a system that assigns fixed places to objects-as-signs. 9
10 In my mind, there is no doubt that artistic interventions such as those of Wilson 10
11 and Shonibare are capable of disrupting the traditional order of objects in Western 11
12 museums and of questioning naturalised understandings of history. Again, can they 12
13 also help us to envision a ‘postcolonial museum’? In recent years, an agonistic 13

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14 discourse on ‘decolonial thinking’ and ‘decolonial aesthetics’ has emerged from 14
15 the broader field of postcolonial studies and theory. In ‘Museums in the Colonial 15
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Horizon of Modernity’, the protagonist of decoloniality Walter Mignolo has made
a case for a clear-cut distinction between ‘postcoloniality’ and ‘decoloniality’,
and claimed Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum for decoloniality. According to
Mignolo, Wilson’s intervention was a decolonial and hence political reminder of
the ‘underlying syntax’ of coloniality and ‘the hegemonic relations of power’ that
shape museums culturally, socially and economically (Mignolo 2011, 83).
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22 In what follows, I will use Mignolo’s assertive interpretation as a bridgehead 22
23 for a reconsideration of two issues central to the idea of the postcolonial museum: 23
24 first, whether or not it is possible to differentiate sharply between postcolonial and 24
25 decolonial thinking, and second, the extent to which Mignolo’s simple equation 25
26 of an art project with the politics of decoloniality captures the transformative 26
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27 potential of artists’ interventions in museums in an age of migration, when the 27

28 much-desired diversity of audiences should also be mirrored in the chosen exhibits 28
29 and modes of display, which means in the histories that are told and the way in 29
30 which they are told. 30
31 31
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32 32
33 Postcoloniality and Decoloniality 33
34 34
35 In Walter Mignolo’s understanding, postcolonial and decolonial thinking are 35
36 two different spheres. He defines postcoloniality as an offspring of Western 36
37 postmodernism. It is a critique of European colonialism that emerged in Western 37
38 Europe and the USA, and which brought French post-structuralism into dialogue 38
39 with orientalism and subaltern studies in India. Decoloniality, on the other hand, 39
40 emerged from the critical traditions of Latin America and found a continuous 40
41 source of inspiration in the countless social movements and uprisings of indigenous 41
42 activist groups in Latin America and elsewhere (Mignolo 2007, 163–4; Mignolo 42
43 2011, 79). In the ‘Decolonial Aesthetics (I)’ manifesto (written by Mignolo in joint 43
44 authorship with a group of decolonial thinkers, artists and activists), decoloniality 44

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1 emerges as a political and ideological project in which artistic practices and 1

2 activism play a leading role (Mignolo et al. 2011). In addition, the manifesto 2
3 revives the Modernist belief in the emancipatory power of the avant-garde and 3
4 sees decolonial aesthetics as a representative of community-based interculturalism 4
5 ‘from-below’, as opposed to multiculturalism, which the authors claim to be state- 5
6 enforced ‘from-above’: 6
7 7
8 Decoloniality endorses interculturality (which has been conceptualised by 8
9 organised communities) and delinks from multiculturalism (which has been 9
10 conceptualised and implemented by the State). Decolonial transmodern 10
11 aesthetics is intercultural, inter-epistemic, inter-political, inter-aesthetical and 11
12 inter-spiritual but always from perspectives of the global south and the former- 12
13 Eastern Europe. (Mignolo et al. 2011) 13

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15 Postcolonial and decolonial thinking obviously have different intellectual 15
16 pedigrees. As opposed to the deconstructive approach and dialectic perspective that 16
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characterise postcolonial theories concerning hybridity and cultural translation,
decoloniality has a polarising political agenda. It is founded on a dualistic view of
a world divided into a hemisphere of Evil and a hemisphere of Good: an imperialist
North dedicated to imposing on all others ‘the Western imperial reason’ (Mignolo
and Tlostanova 2012, 7) and a liberating South (including the former Eastern
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22 Europe). Whereas the first is demonised as purely racist, colonialist, capitalist and 22
23 universalist, the latter is defined as the home of convivial ‘pluriversalism’ and 23
24 decolonial emancipation (Mignolo et al. 2011). Despite these differences, the two 24
25 positions seem to share some basic assumptions and aims. 25
26 Mignolo claims that the basic premise in decolonial thinking is that ‘coloniality 26
27 is constitutive of modernity and there is no modernity without coloniality’ (Mignolo 27
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28 and Tlostanova 2012, 8; Mignolo 2007, 162). However, this assumption and line 28
29 of inquiry is fundamental to postcolonial thinking, too. Moreover, when reading 29
30 Janet Wilson, Christina Şandru and Sarah Lawson Welsh’s recent stocktaking of 30
31 the aims and institutional position of postcolonial studies, one gathers that there 31
32 are more similarities than differences between the postcolonial and decolonial 32
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33 ‘projects’. Both take as their object of study underprivileged subjectivities, 33

34 marginalised political entities, and the violence of colonial and imperial agendas; 34
35 and both primarily articulate their critique from institutional positions in major 35
36 universities, frequently in the West (Wilson et al. 2010, 8). 36
37 To conclude, Mignolo’s sharp distinction between postcoloniality and 37
38 decoloniality seems to be more rhetorical than actual, although Mignolo and 38
39 Madina Tlostanova claim that decolonial epistemologies ‘will be constructed 39
40 with their “back” toward the West’, thereby also ‘delinking’ from Westernised 40
41 postcolonial studies (Mignolo and Tlostanova 2012, 12). Rather than seeing 41
42 postcolonial studies and decolonial thinking as discrete fields of knowledge, I 42
43 argue that decolonial thinking could be seen as a faction of the broad field of 43
44 postcolonial studies; a certain mode of practising a critique which favours 44

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1 an interventionist mode of ‘doing’ or performing art and culture, with the aim 1
2 of ‘mining’, and thereby undermining, colonial perceptions of the world. If 2
3 decoloniality is understood as a critical, interventionist strategy, it is of particular 3
4 relevance to the revision of European museums. 4
5 I will now return to Wilson and Shonibare to substantiate my proposition 5
6 that decolonial interventions can be a means of turning museums into sites of 6
7 contamination that are capable of including formerly repressed histories and 7
8 migrating memories. As a first step, I will scrutinise Mignolo’s reading of 8
9 Wilson’s installation. Mignolo opens with the question of how museums with 9
10 historical roots in the logic of coloniality can contribute to the decolonisation 10
11 of knowledge and become places to learn how to unlearn, in order to relearn 11
12 (Mignolo 2011, 73). He builds his argument on Wilson’s Mining the Museum, 12
13 which he considers to be ‘an exemplary case of a decolonising perspective’ 13

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14 and ‘an exemplar of epistemic and aesthetic disobedience’ (Mignolo 2011, 72). 14
15 Mignolo is primarily concerned with explaining the basic tenets of decolonial 15
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thinking and how coloniality continues to be ‘an underlying syntax’ that affects 16
‘the entire socio-economic system and subject formation’ (Mignolo 2011, 84). 17
He only briefly introduces three well-known displays of Mining the Museum 18
before jumping to his conclusion that its most powerful element was ‘a 19
decolonial statement in the heart of the museum which is an imperial/colonial 20
(and of course national) institution’ (Mignolo 2011, 76). 21
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22 To Mignolo, Wilson’s art is nothing but a political statement that constitutes 22
23 a decolonising reminder of the museum’s underlying colonial syntax, and it is 23
24 the political content that makes Mining the Museum ‘one of the enormous 24
25 contributions … to the decolonisation of being and knowledge’ (Mignolo 2011, 25
26 80). The aesthetic aspects of Wilson’s installation are no more part of Mignolo’s 26
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27 understanding of Wilson’s work than the history of slavery was a visible part of 27
28 the collection of the Maryland Historical Society before Wilson so effectively 28
29 mined it. Since Mignolo does not explore Wilson’s artistic method, he fails to 29
30 answer the critical question of what it is about his installation – its strategy of 30
31 display and the modes of attention it invited – that constitutes its decolonising 31
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32 perspective. Surely, it is not the slave shackles and the Ku Klux Klan mask in 32
33 themselves. Rather than simply ignoring the connections between the postcolonial 33
34 and the aesthetic, like Mignolo does, I argue that in a museum context, where 34
35 visual display is a primary medium of communication, it is crucial to consider 35
36 the aesthetic aspects in order to grasp art’s decolonising potential. If institutional 36
37 interventions by artists are instances of ‘politics’, as Mignolo suggests, they are 37
38 instances of politics performed by means of aesthetics. 38
39 39
40 40
41 The Postcolonial and the Aesthetic 41
42 42
43 The little-examined notions of ‘a postcolonial aesthetic’ and ‘decolonial aesthetics’ 43
44 will serve as starting points. I have adopted the notion of a postcolonial aesthetic 44

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1 from the literary scholar Elleke Boehmer, and the notion of decolonial aesthetics 1
2 from the ‘Decolonial Aesthetics (I)’ manifesto. I use these terms for want of better 2
3 words. As Boehmer points out, postcolonial critics are generally hostile to matters 3
4 ‘solely aesthetic’, considering this to be a Western, middle-class indulgence. They 4
5 tend to avoid the word ‘aesthetic’ and to read artworks – in the widest sense – as 5
6 testimonies, political critiques or ideological manifestos. As a result, they often 6
7 come to rely on a reductive and generally unacknowledged notion of aesthetics 7
8 and aesthetic modes of attention (Boehmer 2010, 170–71). Judging from the 8
9 manifesto and Mignolo’s reading of Wilson’s exhibition, this critique applies to 9
10 decolonial thinkers, too. According to Boehmer, the unreflected implicit notion 10
11 of aesthetics in postcolonial scholarship typically invokes polyglot layering and 11
12 cross-cultural mixings – like the manifesto’s declaration of decolonial aesthetics 12
13 as being ‘inter-aesthetical’ and aimed at ‘pluriversalism’. Such invocations rest 13

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14 fundamentally on what Boehmer calls a mimetic aesthetic, because the work is 14
15 presumed to merely reflect postcolonial cultural politics or conditions (Boehmer 15
16 2010, 171). It is indeed a mimetic aesthetic that underlies Mignolo’s understanding 16
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of Wilson’s work as a political critique of colonialism.
Although I wish to highlight the issue of aesthetics in postcolonial discourses,
I hesitate to speak of postcolonial or decolonial aesthetics. Artists working
with a postcolonial or decolonial perspective are often deeply entangled in the
institutional and economic structures of the Western art world and draw on
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22 movements in Western mainstream art such as conceptual art, institutional critique 22
23 and installation art. One must therefore be careful not to validate neo-essentialist 23
24 notions of a particular postcolonial or decolonial aesthetics, and to promote the 24
25 illusion of the singularity of postcolonial or decolonial art. For example, Wilson’s 25
26 work is based on the strategies of conceptual art and institutional critique (González 26
27 2008, 66–7), whereas Shonibare’s work draws heavily on Western art history and 27
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28 installation art. However, this complicity with Western economic, social and art 28
29 institutional systems does not stifle their critique; on the contrary, complicity is 29
30 the very precondition for their decolonising infiltration of Western institutions, in 30
31 order to launch their critique from within the institutions. 31
32 Despite these reservations, I use the terms in question as my starting points to 32
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33 emphasise the centrality of ‘aesthetics’ to any exploration of how postcoloniality 33

34 or decoloniality is articulated in art and culture. In my view, we cannot grasp 34
35 how artists such as Wilson and Shonibare articulate a postcolonial critique without 35
36 analysing their respective artistic methods. Without attention to artistic forms and 36
37 languages, we cannot comprehend what it is within art or particular works of art 37
38 that performs postcolonial or decolonial work. Only through aesthetic analysis can 38
39 we discover how interventionist strategies can bring repressed histories and the 39
40 museum’s inherent power-knowledge system to light. 40
41 As Boehmer points out: ‘the postcolonial entails a definition drawn not from 41
42 the work but from the world’ (Boehmer 2010, 176). It primarily denotes history, 42
43 not aesthetic form. Throughout, I will therefore use Boehmer’s definition of the 43
44 term ‘aesthetic’ as referring to a concern with form as a critical part of a work’s 44

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1 content. It follows that it is not defined as something autonomous, but as an element 1

2 that actively shapes the work’s content and is complicit with the work’s content 2
3 and contexts. Consequently, the term implies attention to the work’s generic and 3
4 formal aspects and its connotative language, but also a concern not to relate that 4
5 work solely to historical, social and political frames of reference. Although the 5
6 topic of the work emanates from outside the work, from the world and its injustice, 6
7 the artist has felt that this topic could only find adequate expression in a particular 7
8 kind of artwork. The work must thus be read on its own artistic terms, insisting on 8
9 its own particular modes of attention (Boehmer 2010, 171 and 179). 9
10 Mieke Bal’s distinction between ‘an art of politics’ and ‘an art of the political’ 10
11 supports this definition of the ‘aesthetic’. The former is an art of didactic political 11
12 statements; the latter uses aesthetics as a weapon that moves people, so that their 12
13 perspectives may change.1 My point is that the decolonising effect of Mining the 13

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15 contents – its function as ‘an art of politics’. Its deconstructive disclosure of the 15
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museum’s politics of exhibiting and ideological role as a social institution relies 16
on Wilson’s subtle use of artistic and curatorial means to move his audiences 17
in affective ways. The sensory impact of his works stirs bodily, emotional and 18
reflective responses, which are not so easily controlled and politically uniform 19
as Mignolo’s reading of Wilson’s installation suggests. As Wilson himself has 20
observed, his juxtaposition of objects traditionally kept apart functions as ‘one way 21
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22 of unlocking [history] without a didactic tone – allowing the objects to speak to 22
23 each other’ (quoted in González 2008, 87). The museum’s Director of Education, 23
24 Judy Van Dyke, also stressed the variety of reactions, especially to the Klan hood: 24
25 25
26 One black man said to me that it was almost humorous. I was blown away …. 26
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27 And another black man said, ‘Well, I don’t see anything funny about it. To me 27
28 it’s not funny at all. I’ve had personal experience with the Klan in Louisiana and 28
29 I can hardly look at this. I am sweating right now, just looking at it.’ (Van Dyke, 29
30 quoted in González 2008, 88) 30
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32 Wilson’s emphatically corporeal juxtaposition of pram and adult-size hood (Figure 32

33 9.3) functions as a visual metaphor for how African-American slaves and citizens 33
34 were forced to nurture the baby masters whose cruelty and violence would later 34
35 make them sweat from fear. 35
36 Reading Mignolo against the grain, the most interesting points become the 36
37 tiny affective cracks in his otherwise seamless political argument. Contrary to 37
38 the sweating visitor, Mignolo ‘shivered’ when confronted with the juxtaposition 38
39 of pram and Klan hood. In addition, the unusual experience of seeing a bust of 39
40 Napoleon placed on a pedestal so low that visitors would look down on him left 40
41 Mignolo bewildered, because the unfamiliar debasement produced ‘some strange 41
42 42
43 1  Mieke Bal, in discussion at the conference India! Art on the Move: Migration and 43
44 Contemporary Art, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark, 26 October 2012. 44

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Fred Wilson, ‘Modes of Transport 1770–1910’, from Mining the
Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson, The Contemporary
Museum and Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, 1992–
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22 93. Baby carriage c. 1908, hood twentieth century. Makers 22
23 unknown. Photograph © Fred Wilson, reproduced courtesy of 23
24 the artist and the Pace Gallery 24
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27 sensation in your body and in your brain’ (Mignolo 2011, 76). One may infer 27
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28 that Wilson’s juxtapositions caused an aesthetic shock that stirred ambiguous 28

29 sensations not easily verbalised, but capable of disrupting naturalised modes of 29
30 perception and of producing fresh political insight. Mignolo’s article is in itself an 30
31 eloquent testimony to this effect. 31
32 Just like Wilson’s mining, Shonibare’s use of aesthetic seduction highlights 32
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33 the complexity and reciprocity of interracial and colonial relations (Figure 9.4). 33
34 I wish to propose that not only did Garden of Love manage to smuggle artworks 34
35 loaded with references to canonical masterpieces of Western art history into an 35
36 ethnographical museum otherwise reserved for non-Western ‘indigenous’ art, but 36
37 by adding his artworks to a museum of the ‘Other’, Shonibare also succeeded in 37
38 provincialising or indigenising Europe. 38
39 The quai Branly Museum was intended as a gesture of respect for the arts and 39
40 cultures of the small tribal peoples of the Americas, Africa, the Pacific and the 40
41 Arctic. However, a reasoned critique of neoprimitivism was expressed when it 41
42 opened in 2006 (Clifford 2007, 5–6). It can therefore be said that one outcome of 42
43 Shonibare’s installation was to filter European culture through the neoprimitivist 43
44 aestheticisation of the quai Branly Museum. He took the European colonisers as 44

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22 Figure 9.4 Yinka Shonibare, ‘The Crowning’ from Garden of Love, Musée 22
23 du quai Branly, Paris, 2007. Two mannequins, Dutch wax 23
24 printed cotton textile, shoes, coir mattins, artificial silk flowers, 24
25 160 × 280 × 210 cm. Photograph by Patrick Gries. Image 25
26 reproduced courtesy of the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New 26
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27 York, and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London 27

28 28
29 29
30 objects of curiosity in the manner of European ethnographers, thereby reversing 30
31 the gaze: ‘These members of the aristocracy, as a modern African, I find in a way 31
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32 that they are objects of curiosity, in a kind of reverse way. So the fetish for me, 32
33 as an African, is the eighteenth-century European culture, whilst their fetish is 33
34 the African mask!’ (Müller 2007a, 21). 34
35 At quai Branly, ‘illusion’ and ‘the work of art’ coexist uneasily with the realism of 35
36 ethnography and history. As a result, the balance between ethnography and aesthetics 36
37 has been the focus of the debate, with the neoprimitivism and aestheticism of the 37
38 permanent display area as the main point of criticism. As James Clifford has noted, 38
39 the neo-Naturvölker concept of Jean Nouvel’s spectacular architecture becomes 39
40 oppressive here, overpowering the curatorial attempts to claim conceptual space for 40
41 the displayed objects (Clifford 2007, 10). The presence of an exhibition by a big 41
42 name in the global art world like Shonibare made the distinction between fine art 42
43 and ethnographic artefacts even more uncertain, and enhanced the aestheticisation 43
44 already present in the display of the ethnographical collection. 44

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 Mining the Museum in an Age of Migration 135

1 But what about politics? Here it is useful to recall Bal’s distinction. While an 1
2 art of politics risks falling into propaganda, Bal argues that an art of the political 2
3 ‘demonstrates that the political impact is not dependent on political statements’. 3
4 On the contrary, ‘[the] political of art must stay aloof of politics in order to be 4
5 effective’.2 With its combination of unequivocal political messages and affective 5
6 impact, Wilson’s installation functioned as both. Shonibare’s garden was an art of 6
7 the political, moving audiences politically by aesthetic means: luscious colours, 7
8 eroticism, decapitation and the ethnographical re-contextualisation of European 8
9 culture. One therefore wonders whether the affective impact of art may move 9
10 spectators more deeply than the immediate political statements that count for 10
11 everything with Mignolo. 11
12 As Mignolo points out, there is no right or natural way to define what museums 12
13 should do, but museums should span different and agonistic kinds of interpretative 13

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14 practice (Mignolo 2011, 84). To invite artists to make critical interventions into 14
15 museum collections and practices can help unravel the colonial syntax and logic 15
16 still deeply ingrained in many Western museums. However, the decolonising 16
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potential of artists’ institutional interventions may well be greater than that.
Artists have practised institutional interventions for several decades now.
Having a legacy does not mean that the détournement provided by artists has lost its
poignancy. Quite the opposite, since it means that artists can now draw on a range
of interventionist strategies knowing which of them achieved decolonisation work
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20
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22 and which ended up serving the institutions they were intended to criticise. Just 22
23 as postcolonial studies have been able to renew themselves, so too are artists able 23
24 to produce new types of critical intervention that contribute to the decolonisation 24
25 of museum practices. Artistic interventions such as those of Wilson and Shonibare 25
26 can provide the necessary conditions for an act of dis-identification that enables 26
27 museum professionals and audiences to imagine what a ‘postcolonial museum’ 27
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28 that also produces views from the ‘other’ side could be like. 28
29 29
30 30
31 References 31
32 32
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33 Boehmer, Elleke. 2010. ‘A Postcolonial Aesthetic: Repeating Upon the Present’. 33

34 In Rerouting the Postcolonial, edited by Janet Wilson, Christina Şandru and 34
35 Sarah Lawson Welsh. London: Routledge, 170–81. 35
36 Clifford, James. 2007. ‘Quai Branly in Process’. October 120: 3–23. 36
37 Corrin, Lisa G. 1994. ‘Mining the Museum: Artists Look at Museums, Museums 37
38 Look at Themselves’. In Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson, 38
39 edited by Lise G. Corrin. Baltimore, MD: The Contemporary, 1–22. 39
40 Gilvin, Amanda. 2009. ‘Yinka Shonibare: Garden of Love’. Nka: Journal of 40
41 Contemporary African Art 24: 168–70. 41
42 42
43 2  Mieke Bal, ’Political Art’, http://www.miekebal.org/research/book-projects 43
44 (accessed 11 November 2012). 44

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 136 The Postcolonial Museum

1 González, Jennifer A. 2008. Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary 1

2 Installation Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2
3 Jones, Ronald. 2007. ‘Yinka Shonibare: Musee Du Quai Branly’. Artforum 3
4 International 46(2). Accessed 8 November 2012. http://www.questia.com/ 4
5 library/1G1-169913116/yinka-shonibare-musee-du-quai-branly. 5
6 Mignolo, Walter. 2007. ‘Introduction: Coloniality of Power and De-colonial 6
7 Thinking’. Cultural Studies 21(2–3): 155–67. 7
8 ——. 2011. ‘Museums in the Colonial Horizon of Modernity: Fred Wilson’s 8
9 Mining the Museum (1992)’. In Globalization and Contemporary Art, edited 9
10 by Jonathan Harris. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 71–85. 10
11 —— and Madina V. Tlostanova. 2012. Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflections 11
12 from Eurasia and the Americas. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. 12
13 —— et al. 2011. ‘Decolonial Aesthetics (I)’. TDI/Transnational Decolonial 13

y
14 Institute. Accessed 9 November 2012. http://transnationaldecolonialinstitute. 14
15 wordpress.com/decolonial-aesthetics/. 15
16
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Müller, Bernard. 2007a. ‘Interview with Yinka Shonibare MBE’. In Yinka
Shonibare, MBE: Jardin d’amour, edited by Germain Viatte. Paris: Flammarion
and Musée du quai Branly, 11–26.
——. 2007b. ‘Le “Jardin d’Amour” de Yinka Shonibare au musée du quai Branly
ou: quand l’“autre” s’y met’. CeROArt 1. Accessed 7 October 2012. http://
ceroart.revues.org/386.
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22 Wilson, Janet, Christina Şandru and Sarah Lawson Welsh. 2010. ‘General 22
23 Introduction’. In Rerouting the Postcolonial: New Directions for the New 23
24 Millennium. London: Routledge, 1–13. 24
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 1 Chapter 10 1
2 2
3 Blurring History: The Central 3
4 4
5 European Museum and the Schizophrenia 5
6 6
7 of Capital 7
8 8
9 Ivan Jurica 9
10 10
11 11
12 12
13 13

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14 To envision a postcolonial museum within the Central European space means first 14
15 to think of this space as a site of ideological clashes and divisions, both in the 15
present and in the past. Despite all the current proclamations of a united Europe as 16
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a ‘space without borders’, we still experience a division between Western Europe 17
with its uninterrupted culture and ideology, and Eastern Europe with its socialist 18
past and turbo-capitalist present. The museum, as a state institution, subjected to 19
the dominant ideology, dictates the official form of art and culture. We have to bear 20
this aspect in mind when we analyse the postcolonial Central European museum 21
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22 that operates from a position in between different histories and conditions. 22
23 Visiting different places in Central Europe, one will experience exhibitions that 23
24 serve different functions within the political and social structures: so, different 24
25 museums will be encountered in Austria and Germany, in Prague, Bratislava and 25
26 Bucharest. Moreover, one may experience the use of an identical ‘universalist’ 26
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27 form – yet what is the past and present meaning of this form when adopted in 27
28 different histories? 28
29 Another urgent question is raised by the role of postcolonial theory within 29
30 this space. Why do we actually talk about postcolonial theory in Central Europe, 30
31 which does not seem to be affected by classical colonial history as imposed by 31
the Western colonial powers? Postcolonial theory not only deals with colonial 32
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32
33 history, but also with coloniality and the history of capitalism and Christianity. 33
34 If the local official historical narrative excludes any notion of racism and 34
35 colonial exploitation, this still does not mean that coloniality, as an ideology and 35
36 mentality, did not and does not exist within these spaces. Further, it is precisely 36
37 postcolonial theory that enables a different understanding of current processes 37
38 within the transitional societies in the ‘East’, as well as in the West. Last but not 38
39 least, in this sense it is postcolonial theory that provides a radicalised approach 39
40 to the profound implications of the fascist history and post-fascist present in this 40
41 space. For postcolonial theory analyses fascism, its historical and current forms, 41
42 not as a historical error, but as generated by capitalist ideology and practice. So, 42
43 how can we perceive a Central European postcolonial museum? 43
44 44

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 138 The Postcolonial Museum

1 The Central European Postcolonial Museum: The ‘Grand Narrative’ and 1

2 the West 2
3 3
4 The ‘journey’ commences in the centre of a new constellation of Central Europe 4
5 that is actually not new at all in Vienna. Even though from the geopolitical point 5
6 of view Vienna and Austria tended, especially before 1989, to be considered 6
7 (ridiculously) as belonging to Eastern Europe due to their international isolation 7
8 and provinciality, they are definitely spaces of Western culture and ideology 8
9 within the Central European space. This fact is crucial in understanding the 9
10 new, post-1989 role of Vienna and Austria. Their intensive economic growth is 10
11 based on their renewed positioning between the East and the West, combined 11
12 with their historical affiliation to the West. This position secured access to the 12
13 capital necessary for privatising the collapsed Eastern European structures. This 13

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14 might be regarded as the resurrection of a ‘grand narrative’ (a history that lay 14
15 unforgotten) that, in combination with capital, constitutes the foundation of its 15
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reconstructed (Freudmann et al. 2009).
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reactivation. The privatisation of post-socialist cultures and the resurrection of
the new-old centre have gone hand in hand with an emphasis on ‘our’ common
history, traditions and hierarchies. Thus was the post-1989 imperial capital

In 1989, we saw not only the collapse of socialist economies and their
ideology, but also the beginning of globalisation processes. Multinational capital
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22 changed the character of borders, while the movement of the people within the so- 22
23 called ‘borderless’ space remained strictly regulated. The collapse of the Eastern 23
24 European economies and the war in former Yugoslavia generated, among other 24
25 aspects, poverty and a multitude of ‘naked lives’. The consequence was a massive 25
26 migration into spaces which seemed promising in terms of a regular job and a safe 26
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27 existence. 27
28 The Central European postcolonial museum as an official cultural institution 28
29 was affected in a twofold manner: the Eastern European situation and the war in 29
30 former Yugoslavia provided a postcolonial repertoire for the Western museums and 30
31 their exhibiting policy, and Eastern Europeans themselves became potential visitors 31
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32 – either as tourists or as students and migrants. At the same time, the neo-liberal 32
33 economic agenda entered the cultural landscape, or to put it differently, the museum 33
34 was thrown into neo-liberal market structures. Suddenly, the relevance of the museum 34
35 became economical instead of educational or historical. Or to put it more precisely, 35
36 the educational and historical relevance was subordinated to economic issues. This 36
37 does not mean that the historical narrative was not conditioned by economic reasons 37
38 in the past. None the less, as Walter Mignolo (2011) has put it, in the twenty-first 38
39 century, society constitutes a part of the economy, while in the past the opposite was 39
40 the case: the economy was part of society. 40
41 The classical historical museum in Central Europe has yet to confront 41
42 postcolonial theory. There are several reasons for this. First, they have not 42
43 undertaken the attempt to re-write universal history, but rather the opposite. 43
44 There are few museums operating within this territory with postcolonial theory 44

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 Blurring History 139

1 and knowledge at their disposal. In terms of museum organisation, differences are 1

2 minor but crucial as far as theoretical conceptualisation is concerned – the classical 2
3 historical museum operates in the temporality of the present, but it does not work 3
4 with it. The present, meaning the way history is constructed from the current 4
5 point of view, remains invisible within the ‘grand narrative’. In view of historical 5
6 racisms and processes of exclusion, currently being repeated, this connectivity to 6
7 the past and the present could be decisive for re-thinking the capitalist order and 7
8 its ideology in a divided Europe that prosecutes migration. 8
9 One of the popular museums that combines the consumerist expectation of 9
10 a visitor with the attempt to re-formulate the dominant perception of history is 10
11 the Vienna Museum. Recently, one of its curators proposed the historical figure 11
12 of Angelo Soliman with the intention of revealing the long history of Austrian 12
13 racism. Who was Angelo Soliman? The exhibition booklet Angelo Soliman – 13

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14 An African in Vienna introduces him to the contemporary visitor as follows: 14
15 ‘Born around 1721 in sub-Saharan Africa, enslaved as a child … a man who had 15
16 enjoyed a distinguished career in the enlightened circles of the capital and was 16
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posthumously displayed in a museum as a half-naked “savage”, adorned with
ostrich feathers and shells’ (Wien Museum 2011).
The exhibition space was divided into three parts: first, the life and death
of Angelo Soliman were presented, then examples were shown of how art and
culture appropriated this historical figure, while the last section displayed current
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22 structural racisms of the state, supported and reinforced by powerful mass-media 22
23 representation, including such cases such as the killing of Marcus Omofuma.1 23
24 So the narration and dramaturgy did not only include Angelo Soliman, but 24
25 struggled, via the extension into the present, with an attempt to grasp racism in 25
26 general. Yet how was this actually achieved? 26
27 Popular museums obviously cannot avoid presenting their subjects in a 27
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28 popular way. Soliman and Omofuma, both historical figures, were, among others, 28
29 displayed in the same way as the defeat of Ottoman troops near Vienna in 1683 or 29
30 the construction of St Stephen’s Cathedral or the Viennese underground. I cannot 30
31 say whether the aim of curators was to intervene in the current and historical 31
32 racism by way of art. But if this was not their intention, what were they seeking? 32
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33 What they did manage to do was to exhibit the person Soliman (or Omofuma). 33
34 The attempt to critically discuss white European racisms, via the posthumous 34
35 display of a non-white European man, occurred through the gaze turned on the 35
36 ‘Other’ as object. The desired intervention in dominant ideological structures 36
37 actually had the effect of conserving and reproducing them. Postcolonial theory 37
38 here entered a popular institution of the historical narrative, accompanied by 38
39 questions of historical and current racisms, but the institution itself was not 39
40 disrupted. Rather, the popular museum was renovated through the life and 40
41 destiny of Angelo Soliman, and postcolonial theory was institutionalised. But 41
42 does critical theory really aim to change official institutions? 42
43 43
44 1 See http://no-racism.net/rubrik/97/ (accessed 10 March 2013). 44

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 140 The Postcolonial Museum

1 In terms of exposing the postcolonial museum as operating within the 1

2 schizophrenia of capital, a museum of modern and contemporary arts seems to be 2
3 an even more suitable example. Why? Because, as distinct from a popular historical 3
4 museum – which is conceptualised rather as a site of aesthetic consumerism and 4
5 tourism – modern Western museums present themselves as sites of confrontation, 5
6 where critical knowledge is produced. While this might be true, the crucial point 6
7 in this context remains what sort of knowledge and what sort of confrontation is 7
8 implied? Here, with regard to a postcolonial museum, I will examine in more detail 8
9 the role of art education in modern art museums. It is important to bear in mind that 9
10 art education in a museum is not just any department, or a simple extension of the 10
11 museum services. Rather, within Austria’s cultural and educational landscape, it has 11
12 become a top item on the agenda in recent years. So a museum in Austria no longer 12
13 simply focuses on collection and conservation, but nowadays also on education. 13

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14 An institution of modern and contemporary art envisages itself as progressive, 14
15 open to new theories, models, innovative forms and so on. It increasingly asserts its 15
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political statements through art. In this sense, the modern museum evokes notions
of democracy and democratisation, communicated through the intensification
of educational and transmission processes. Yet ‘opening up’ the museum to
the ‘outside’ is not a sign of change in the bourgeois mentality, but rather of
the modified conditions of the modern museum within the neo-liberal market
democracies. These processes were intended to reinforce the social and political
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22 relevance of the state institution to the market. What does ‘democratisation’ of the 22
23 institution and of art mean? If in the past the museum was described by its critics as 23
24 a space of dead art, now the dead – actually meaning de-politicised – universalistic 24
25 form has been extended through a diversified museum discourse involving a 25
26 cacophony of meanings and voices. Everybody can enter the museum, everybody 26
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27 can express him- or herself; the education department is available when needed 27
28 and will explain all. But the most important aspect in terms of ‘understanding’ art 28
29 within the museum – that is, how the museum as an institution functions and how 29
30 a certain form or practice becomes art – remains invisible. The institution operates 30
31 in the same way as ideology – it is possible to talk about everything, but not about 31
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32 the museum/ideology itself. If ideology operates as naturalised and omnipresent, 32

33 so does the museum institution as one of its agents – the meaning and role of the 33
34 historical narrative shifts out of focus and is blurred. 34
35 Here I approach the primary schizophrenia of the postcolonial museum as a 35
36 capitalist institution. The principal relevance of modern and contemporary art 36
37 production is interpreted and theorised as a tradition of resistance against the 37
38 capitalist market, executed by means of formal innovation. So if a critical political 38
39 agenda was, and still is, a subject of modern and post-modern art production in 39
40 any form, what relevance does this have in a society that operates under a ‘market 40
41 consumer dictate’? What relevance does an image or the evocation of resistance 41
42 against the market have if the market and mechanisms of profit dominate and 42
43 legitimise all fields of contemporary globalised societies, including the education 43
44 and art system? What is the meaning of a resistance against the market and 44

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 Blurring History 141

1 capitalism if these are privatised by capital and ideology? Or, to put it another way,
1
2 what form does, or should, the resistance against exploitative capitalism take?2
3 Last, but not least, it is also important that forms of resistance are not free from
3
4 universal validity. 4
5 This situation turns out to be even more absurd when dealing with migrants 5
6 or their children of the second or third generation. The constant confrontation6
7 with racist state power in terms of control and disciplining is here focused on7
8 their integration into the official system and structures. One of the most frequent
8
9 demands is inclusion in the job market as a guarantee of possible and successful
9
10 integration. As integration in the job market apparently results in cultural 10
11 integration, this leads to participation in the state culture that is the basis of a non-
11
12 reflexive dominant racist cultural history. In a similar fashion, museums of modern
12
13 and contemporary art deal with activities and resistant cultural and societal forms,
13

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14 while migrants experience the exact opposite within these cultures as they are14
15 increasingly reduced to passive objects. 15
16 Against this background, it is possible to argue that art education within the
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modern museum institution, presented in terms of democratisation, operates as a

narrative. The audience is capable of following what the educator is talking

17
mythology. The talk about art, its form and content, the attempt to transmit this
18
knowledge to students and pupils, end up, once again, as an overarching seductive
19
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about, it is even very interesting, but that is all. So the topic of resistance in a
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22 modern museum is maybe relevant to resistance within the virtual space – for the
22
23 participant should stimulate a resistance, he or she should make it possible. In the
23
24 end, however, it actually reinforces the exterior system that is repeated and relayed
24
25 inside the museum. 25
26 The museum is not only about artworks, it also involves employees and their
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27 working conditions, with precise hierarchies and huge income differences. The 27
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28 postcolonial status of the institution might well be represented by the following,

28
29 actually stereotypical, scenario: an exhibition space full of modernist paintings or
29
30 images representing modernist utopias, post-modernist criticisms of the system,
30
31 even postcolonial positions, all for the sake of evoking a progressing institution
31
32 and society. And a team of cleaners, consisting of poorly paid migrants, is at32
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33 work between the objects. These exploited ‘cultural workers’ are like shadows 33
34 – they work very early in the morning, as during opening time their presence 34
35 would disturb the visitors, the staff, and above all the artworks. Alternatively, this
35
36 scenario could itself be a work of art. 36
37 37
38 38
39 The Central European Postcolonial Museum/the Colonial Difference and 39
40 the East 40
41 41
42 As the topics of migration and colonial history became urgent in the field of 42
43 contemporary art production, postcolonial theory also became relevant to the 43
44 Central European space. While postcolonial theory turned the gaze back on to 44

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 142 The Postcolonial Museum

1 white racist Western societies and their ideology within the framework of the 1
2 history of classical colonial powers, in the Central European space these issues 2
3 still focused on the other(s). It was a theory by the ‘Other’ about the others, about 3
4 the white bourgeois mentality of producing and exploiting colonial difference. 4
5 This happened there, somewhere else, far away from here. In terms of the structure 5
6 and the form of a museum, and in terms of the structure and nature of a historical 6
7 narrative that appears to be segregated from the present, postcolonial theory was 7
8 again turned by institutionalised processes into a curiosity. It signalled the progress 8
9 of the institution. In the end, it re-produced colonial thought and the ‘Other’. 9
10 In this respect, the post-1989 privatisation of the Eastern European space and 10
11 structures via Western, as well as local, capital was represented in the colonial 11
12 rhetoric of modernisation, renovation and progress of the post-socialist cultures. 12
13 If, in the 1990s, the notion of ‘self-colonisation’ became popular for indicating 13

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14 the processes of transformation from socialism to turbo-capitalism, one important 14
15 factor was missing from this formulation: an alternative to a straightforward 15
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subjugation to the West. Populist promises of a better future based on a desire
for unlimited consumption and nationalist pride provided a basis for the future
order of this space. The collective disillusionment with the dream of capitalist
democracy as the guarantee for equality and justice within the post-socialist
societies quickly followed. Forty years of a patriarchal totalitarian socialism has
had a bitter consequence. Given that socialist and communist ideology generated
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22 a radical criticism of capitalism, currently any kind of criticism against turbo- 22
23 capitalism is immediately viewed as socialism, with its associated totalitarian 23
24 structures and communist ideology. Of course, the issue of appropriating 24
25 postcolonial theory in Central Europe or post-socialist societies is awkward. In 25
26 the context of nostalgia for the totalitarian past within the totalitarian present, 26
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27 postcolonial theory not only focuses on the history of colonialism, but also on the 27
28 history of capitalism, Euro-centrism, Christianity, and on the dominant historical 28
29 narrative as well. If, for example, socialism constituted and legitimised itself via 29
30 anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, the turbo-capitalist present 30
31 constitutes and legitimises itself by means of its anti-communist ideology. While 31
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32 currently the socialist past is presented as the darkest era of Central European 32
33 modernity, the fascist past as generated by capitalism is increasingly rehabilitated 33
34 and legitimised. 34
35 In the last twenty years, the post-socialist state museum, as an agent of official 35
36 ideology, has been intensively concerned with its universal re-positioning in terms 36
37 of its inclusion in the Western art system and market – thus it has focused on its 37
38 own re-historicisation. The postcolonial Eastern European museum is struggling, 38
39 as Jürgen Habermas put it at the beginning of the 1990s, with the institutionalised 39
40 ‘catching up of the West’ (Habermas 1990). In the post-socialist context, this 40
41 implies a re-construction of modernity and of the universalistic modernist form. 41
42 In terms of Slovakia or the Czech Republic, it is a mutation of the former avant- 42
43 garde into official art history and power. Both the museum and art production 43
44 serve as evidence of the ‘correct’ universal history of civilised societies that is 44

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1 worth integrating into Western structures: they provide evidence of how to fill 1
2 the gaps of the post-socialist colonial difference. The history of socialist realism 2
3 has to be deleted, while at the same time this history is used to evoke capitalism 3
4 as independent and free. In this context, the art of socialist realism is subject 4
5 to deletion, or else is exposed in amusement parks or museums of terror.2 The 5
6 twentieth-century socialist past is currently conceived and presented as a historical 6
7 error that could be defeated. 7
8 But how does this re-historicisation in the context of a universal history affect 8
9 the comprehension of the universal art form? This might also answer the question of 9
10 why the booming Western interest in Eastern European art production faded away 10
11 so quickly in the first half of the 1990s. In this context, the Slovakian art historian 11
12 and curator Petra Hanáková (2010) refers to a paradox: the politically rather left- 12
13 wing universalistic Western art form represents exactly the opposite within the 13

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14 Eastern European context. The form taken from the West was previously adopted 14
15 and developed as representing the unofficial art scene, as a counter-position to 15
16 socialist realism and culture. Hanáková describes the subsequent situation in the 16
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being communists, and vice versa. op
1990s as a mutual disappointment: the heroes of the internationally canonised art
history from the West were now regarded by their Eastern European colleagues as
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22 Collecting Art – Relocating the Profit of Relocated Production 22
23 23
24 Another example of a postcolonial museum in Central Europe – viewed in the 24
25 context of the capitalist establishment of an art collection – is the Essl Museum in 25
26 Klosterneuburg, near Vienna.3 The Essl Museum is part of the estate of the Essl 26
27 family, who founded and owned the Austrian Baumaxx company that has been 27
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28 widely active throughout Central Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 28
29 Essls are known as rather untypical art collectors – they truly love art; without 29
30 any art education, they simply like what they like. Money is never an issue when 30
31 it comes to art, and their shopping trips in the art scenes worldwide, including 31
32 various more or less ‘exotic’ territories and cultures, are legendary. In this context, 32
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33 it is also interesting to note their engagement with the nascent Eastern European 33
34 art scene in the form of the popular Essl Award. This competition assembles young 34
35 talent as well as well-known theoreticians of the local art scenes. The Austrian 35
36 political economist Hannes Hofbauer writes in this context about obligatory 36
37 models of enterprise for Austrian and German companies. Since the 1990s, when 37
38 the first Western companies relocated their production to post-socialist countries, 38
39 this relocation of production from Germany or Austria to a post-socialist country 39
40 indicated serious and competent economic management – leaving the production 40
41 in Germany or Austria was considered economically irresponsible towards the 41
42 42
43 2  See, for example, the film Red Tours by Joanne Richardson and David Rych (2010). 43
44 3 See http://www.essl.museum/english/index.html (accessed 10 March 2013). 44

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1 company (Hofbauer 2010). The establishment of foundations and art collections 1

2 might be considered part of such obligatory enterprise models. On the topic of 2
3 the repetition of colonial processes, Hofbauer remains careful, but beside the 3
4 exploitation of cheap labour, he considers the obverse relocation of immense 4
5 profits to the head offices in the West as a possible moment of colonial repetition. 5
6 The Essl Collection might be understood in these terms: their museum and the 6
7 collection are products of relocated capital and the relocation of profit. 7
8 8
9 9
10 And Lastly … 10
11 11
12 A good example of an activist art project, deploying postcolonial theory with the 12
13 intention of cracking the bourgeois hegemonic image and representation in the 13

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14 Central European space, might be the Hidden Histories – Remapping Mozart 14
15 project, realised in 2006 in Vienna on behalf of the ‘Mozart Jahr’, celebrating the 15
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250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.4 The project featured four exhibitions in four
locations in Vienna involving a network of scientists, artists, theoreticians and
activists. The project actively and critically examined historical and contemporary
problems in art, in politics and society. It shifted established perceptions and
created new meanings. The exhibitions, called ‘configurations’, used quotes from
the libretti of Mozart operas and gave the four configurations a frame, focusing
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22 on and intervening in themes such as orientalism, exoticism, racism (anti-Roma), 22
23 the appropriation of Mozart by the Nazis and the Second Austrian Republic, and 23
24 the criminalisation of desire, with the corresponding counter-strategies. Against 24
25 this background, the activities of the anti-racist collective Pamoja – Research 25
26 Group on Black Austrian History and Presence also deserve mention. This 26
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27 collective, as the name implies, intensively researches Austrian history in terms 27

28 of coloniality, colonialism and racism. Another important initiative is Maiz, an 28
29 independent organisation founded and operated by and for migrant women, based 29
30 in Linz, Austria.5 Both of these organisations act at the core of anti-racist self- 30
31 determination and represent a counter-strategy to, among other things, the divided 31
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32 postcolonial present and colonial past in the context of a society of ‘equal rights’. 32
33 33
34 34
35 References 35
36 36
37 Freudmann, Eduard, Ivan Jurica and Ivana Marjanović. 2009. ‘A Trip to the 37
38 Imperial Capital: Analysis of the Seminar “Writing Central European Art 38
39 History” Initiated by Erste Foundation’. Transversal, February. Accessed 10 39
40 March 2013. http://eipcp.net/policies/freudmannetal/en. 40
41 41
42 42
43 4 See http://www.remappingmozart.mur.at/ (accessed 10 March 2013). 43
44 5 See http://www.maiz.at/en (accessed 10 March 2013). 44

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1 Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. Die nachholende Revolution. Frankfurt am Main: 1

2 Suhrkamp. 2
3 Hanáková, Petra. 2010. Ženy-Inštitúcie? K dejinám umeleckej prevádzky 3
4 deväťdesiatych rokov (‘Women-Institutions? On the History of Art Practices in 4
5 the 1990s’). Bratislava: Slovart. 5
6 Hofbauer, Hannes. 2010. ‘Brussels Version of “Drang nach Osten”: The Economic 6
7 Colonization of Eastern Europe (1990–2010)’. In ‘Der Drang nach Osten’: 7
8 Parallels towards Postcolonialism and Coloniality within the Central 8
9 European Space, curated by Ivan Jurica. Accessed 10 March 2013. http:// 9
10 www.galeriahit.com/sites/default/files/publications/ddno-paper-print. 10
11 pdf. 11
12 Mignolo, Walter. 2011. ‘Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing: On (De)Coloniality, 12
13 Border Thinking, and Epistemic Disobedience’. Transversal, September. 13
Accessed 10 March 2013. http://eipcp.net/transversal/0112/mignolo/en.

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14 14
15 Wien Museum. 2011. Angelo Soliman – An African in Vienna. Accessed 10 March 15
16 2013. http://www.wienmuseum.at/en/exhibitions/detail/ausstellung/angelo- 16
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soliman-ein-afrikaner-in-wien.html. 17
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 1 Chapter 11 1
2 2
3 The Limits to Institutional 3
4 4
5 Change: Organisational Roles and Roots 5
6 6
7 Peggy Levitt 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 ‘The first thing you see when you walk into the new Art of the Americas Wing’, 12
13 Elliot Bostwick Davis, Chair of the Art of the Americas Department at Boston’s 13

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14 Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), told me, ‘are five spectacular K’iché burial urns, 14
15 produced by the Maya in the southern highlands of Guatemala in about 750 AD. 15
These were produced by a highly sophisticated culture, with its own court rituals,
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portraiture [and so on]. We wanted people to see ancient American art and Native
American art on their own terms.’ The museum’s curators also wanted people
to realise that American art never developed in a vacuum. Even early on, links
with neighbouring societies influenced these pre-Colombian artisans. The roots of
American art grew out of conversations with other cultures.
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22 Erica Hirshler, the Senior Curator of American Paintings, who has worked at 22
23 the museum for nearly thirty years, said: 23
24 24
25 What is interesting to me is to see what kinds of real estate are being given to 25
26 different kinds of art. When I first came here in the 1980s, when we talked about 26
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27 colonial art, we were talking about New England and Anglo culture. We were 27
28 talking about Copley and his relationship with England …. In the new wing, for 28
29 the first time, we have a Spanish colonial gallery, and that is a huge change for 29
30 us. It sounds like it shouldn’t be, but it is for Boston, a kind of bastion of Anglo 30
31 culture, to acknowledge that there was a huge colonial presence somewhere else. 31
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32 32
33 The story of American art’s porous boundaries runs through all four floors of the 33
34 museum’s new wing. When visitors see Paul Revere’s iconic Sons of Liberty 34
35 Bowl, commemorating the Boston Tea Party’s organisers, they are supposed to 35
36 recognise that it has a lot in common with the Chinese punch bowls made during 36
37 the same period. ‘Almost any piece of silver in the last half of the eighteenth 37
38 century’, said Dennis Carr, Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, 38
39 ‘would have been Chinese-inspired.’ Similarly, portraits by John Singer Sargent, 39
40 whom most people consider a quintessential American painter, greet visitors on 40
41 the third floor. But Sargent, born to American expatriates in Florence in 1856, 41
42 spent his childhood travelling around Europe, and did not even set foot on US soil 42
43 until he was twenty. Clearly he was not just an American painter, but also a citizen 43
44 of the world. 44

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 148 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Bostwick Davis says: 1

2 2
3 One of the messages of the new wing is that American art is intimately 3
4 connected to its neighbors to the north and south. The wing is very different 4
5 from every other wing of American art in the country because it includes the 5
6 ancient cultures as far as we can go back, plus what we have from where we 6
7 happened to land on this planet. So we are going north, central, and south to 7
8 work with that as a continuum. We walk people through so they get a sense of 8
9 this layering and richness, and I hope for each individual there is an opening of 9
10 the mind [regarding] what is American. 10
11 11
12 The MFA first started collecting pre-Columbian art in the late 1800s. Still, admits 12
13 Dorie Reents-Budet, curator of the MFA’s Art of the Ancient Americas, the 13

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14 collection is weak compared to the museum’s other holdings. Until the new wing 14
15 became a reality, there was no permanent curator because the prevailing attitude 15
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it’s little brown people stuff, you know, it’s not art …. There are still many
museums in the United States that have the pre-Colombian collections in the
‘Hall of Man’ [representing] the nineteenth century attitude about non-Western
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21 cultures as being objects of study, of scientific inquiry into the science of human
22 development rather than art. 22
23 23
24 So why did Museum of Fine Arts curators decide to feature this collection so 24
25 prominently now? How does its retelling of the American art story succeed, and 25
26 where does it come up short? What can this tell us about possible constraints 26
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27 on changing museum practice? The findings presented here are part of a larger 27
28 study of how museums around the world are responding to immigration and 28
29 globalisation. Cultural institutions have always played starring roles in the 29
30 drama of nation-building. But in today’s global world, what kinds of citizens are 30
31 museums creating? What combinations of identities, from the global to the very 31
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32 local, do they reflect, and who is embracing them? Why do some cities create 32
33 outward-looking institutions while others create institutions that look barely 33
34 beyond their doors? What can we learn about nationalism by looking at a country’s 34
35 cultural institutions? To answer these questions, I interviewed museum directors, 35
36 curators and policymakers, reviewed accounts of exhibits, observed gallery talks 36
37 and public programming, and collected stories of eccentric benefactors and iconic 37
38 objects from six sites around the world. 38
39 I treat museums as embedded in urban organisational fields where they may or 39
40 may not make decisions in relation to each other. While not generalisable to the 40
41 larger museum universe, my research illuminates how staff members in particular 41
42 times and places see themselves as creating citizens, what kinds and in what 42
43 combinations, and what their rights and responsibilities might be. Their answers 43
44 reflect how these professionals make sense of the relationship between globalism 44

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 The Limits to Institutional Change 149

1 and localism (and all other identities in between) and what they think the role of 1
2 museums should be in working it out. 2
3 Staff at the MFA see themselves as radically retelling the story of American art. 3
4 In many ways, for this institution, they are. The new wing features pre-Columbian 4
5 and Native American materials more prominently, includes a Spanish colonial 5
6 gallery, and showcases more works by Black, women and Latino artists. But you 6
7 have to look for them. The retelling is subtle, and often overshadowed by the 7
8 sheer volume of material from Colonial New England. The MFA exemplifies 8
9 how locality constrains just how postcolonial museums can become. The cultural 9
10 structures laid down by the city’s founding fathers, and what I call ‘the urban 10
11 cultural armature’ (a city’s social and cultural policies, institutions, demography, 11
12 and endowments), still strongly influence how museums represent the nation in 12
13 the world. The organisational distribution of labour for representing history, within 13

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14 the city and within the nation, also constrains what stories the museum can tell. 14
15 15
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Why Here, Why Now?

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The idea of placing pre-Columbian art at the root of the American art story grew out
of a happy convergence of factors. When MFA Director Malcolm Rogers arrived
in 1992, he reorganised departments to promote communication across mediums
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22 and among the people in charge of them. He combined American Paintings and 22
23 Decorative Arts, folding in some of the Latin American materials that had been 23
24 included previously in Europe. Also placed under the ‘American’ umbrella was 24
25 the pre-Columbian collection, which had never before had a home of its own. 25
26 Demography also came into play. The US is well on its way to becoming a 26
27 majority-minority country. In 2008, the American Association of Museums 27
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28 launched its Center for the Future of Museums (CFM). Its first report, Museums 28
29 and Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures (CFM 2008), illustrated the 29
30 widening gap between American and museum visitor demographics. Before 1970, 30
31 minorities made up 10–13 per cent of the US population, but by 2008, the figure 31
32 had risen to 34 per cent, and was predicted to reach 46 per cent by 2033. Yet only 32
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33 9 per cent of museums’ core visitors were minorities. The report, according to 33
34 founding Director Elizabeth E. Merritt, ‘went viral’. It ‘painted a troubling picture 34
35 of the “probable future” – a future in which, if trends continue in the current 35
36 grooves, museum audiences are radically less diverse than the American public 36
37 and museums serve an ever-shrinking fragment of society’ (CFM 2008, 5). 37
38 The changing face of Boston mirrors the changing face of the nation, but the 38
39 MFA’s visitor profile has not kept pace. The museum’s traditional donor base is 39
40 white, upper-class and ageing. Because it is privately funded, the MFA urgently 40
41 needs to recruit a new generation of visitors and donors. This was certainly on the 41
42 minds of the Art of the Americas staff when they thought about their reinstallation. 42
43 They wanted to tell stories that appealed to more diverse audiences. They wanted 43
44 Bostonians, future Board of Trustees members and tourists of colour to see 44

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 150 The Postcolonial Museum

1 themselves in the walls. One such narrative is that what is made in America is not 1
2 just made in the US. 2
3 To get this message across, curators added more than just pre-Columbian 3
4 materials. The new Spanish colonial gallery contains beautifully crafted religious 4
5 objects from sixteenth-century Bolivia and Peru that rival those made by the best 5
6 New England silversmiths. Nineteenth-century American landscape paintings 6
7 are hung ‘salon-style’ to drive home that many of the artists who created them 7
8 studied and worked abroad. To diversify its collection, the MFA made several 8
9 strategic acquisitions, including Argentine painter Cesar Paternosto’s ‘Staccato’ 9
10 and a 1943 painting by Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam. Curators opted not to ghettoise 10
11 these works by putting them in a special gallery. ‘There is no gallery of African 11
12 American art or of women artists,’ said Erica Hirshler. ‘Women artists should be 12
13 in the same gallery as male artists. It’s not helpful to set them apart in a different 13

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14 room. You cannot change the canon unless you integrate the canon.’ 14
15 Naturally, the new wing met with criticism and acclaim. Many applauded the 15
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museum for its courageous broadening of the American story and were thrilled to 16
see the pre-Columbian and Native American materials so prominently featured. 17
Holland Cotter of the New York Times lauded the MFA for asking the question 18
‘what does “Americas” mean?’ up front and for doing the ‘big, inclusive term 19
justice’ by bringing all of the Americas together, ‘hook[ing] them up, and seat[ing] 20
them as equals at a hemispheric table’. He concluded: 21
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23 in the present political climate … opinions about what America was, is and 23
24 should be are so polarised and proprietorial. And maybe this is where art itself 24
25 comes to the rescue. So much about the new Americas Wing is so startling, 25
26 stimulating and beautiful that you just want to lay down your arms. (Cotter 26
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27 2010, C23) 27
28 28
29 But others felt the new wing came up short. Greg Cook of the Boston Phoenix, 29
30 while impressed overall, highlighted significant gaps in the wing’s representation 30
31 of war and social conflict, noting wryly that ‘after the American Revolution, social 31
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32 critics need not apply’ (Cook 2010). 32

33 Moreover, while the take-away message of the new wing is that American art 33
34 has always been shaped by international forces, whether they be pre-Columbian, 34
35 Native American, European or Asian, this is still a national story.1 Visitors gain 35
36 a more diverse view looking inward at what shaped the US, but they don’t learn 36
37 much about what that means when they look out – about how that interplay 37
38 shaped the country’s connection to the rest of the world. One anonymous museum 38
39 professional said: 39
40 40
41 1  Nevertheless, European influences predominate. In the scholarly volume produced 41
42 about the new wing, two chapters on Native American and pre-Columbian influences 42
43 precede seven chapters on European influences, followed by four chapters on Africa, the 43
44 Near East and Asia. 44

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 The Limits to Institutional Change 151

1 The ‘Art of Americas’ is a peculiar thing to do in thinking about future. While 1

2 it may sound trite, the community we live in now is not bounded by space and 2
3 time, cultural boundaries are all merging together. There is little homogeneity 3
4 but much more cross over and exchange and the creating of new kinds of cultures 4
5 everywhere. So such a nationalistic push is interesting at a time when the world 5
6 is really, truly global. They could have done a much more interpretive approach 6
7 that would have connected America to the world. 7
8 8
9 America’s place in the world, he concluded, is just not a central part of the story. 9
10 10
11 11
12 The Limits to Postcolonial Museum Practice 12
13 13

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14 As studies of the politics and poetics of museum practice have shown, nations 14
15 perform themselves differently (McClellan 2007; Coombes 2004; Dias 2007), 15
16 and museums are central stages where these imaginings are articulated and 16
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disseminated (Fargo and Preziosi 2004). The creation of many of the world’s
premier museums coincided with the birth of the nation-state. In the nineteenth
century, to be a cohesive ‘people’ or nation, you had to have culture. Creating a
unified ‘family’ of millions of people who would never meet required a great deal
of effort and imagination (Anderson 1983). The new nation’s strength depended
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22 on its ability to perform itself to its members using knowledge and practices that 22
23 complete strangers would be able to understand. Museums played an important 23
24 role in the effort to project a sense of connection, although it only extended to the 24
25 national border (Macdonald 2003). 25
26 While opening up the former royal collections to the broader public 26
27 democratised art and created more cultured publics, it was never an egalitarian 27
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28 project. Universal survey museums functioned primarily to transmit society’s 28

29 most revered beliefs to visitors (Duncan and Wallach 2004; DiMaggio 2004; 29
30 Coombes 2004; Zolberg 1996). What was included in the museums’ collection 30
31 and who created it sent clear messages about who belonged to the nation and what 31
32 the nation valued. The ordering of objects and how they were displayed in relation 32
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33 to each other legitimised a particular social and political hierarchy that privileged 33
34 some ways of knowing while excluding others (Hooper-Greenhill 1992; Hooper- 34
35 Greenhill 2000). Because the nation was defined in opposition to other nations 35
36 and ethnic groups, ‘outsiders’ such as migrants or non-Christians were depicted as 36
37 backward or morally inferior. They were unlikely to see themselves represented 37
38 without serious biases, if at all. 38
39 These tensions persist today, and museums actively seek to address them 39
40 (Mason 2007). The challenge, writes Bennett, is to ‘reinvent the museum as an 40
41 institution that can orchestrate new relations and perceptions of difference that 41
42 both break free from the hierarchically organised forms of stigmatic othering that 42
43 characterised the exhibitionary complex and provide more socially invigorating 43
44 and, from a civic perspective, more beneficial interfaces with different cultures’ 44

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 152 The Postcolonial Museum

1 (Bennett 2005, 59). Professionals try to reconstruct museums as ‘differencing 1

2 machines’ that facilitate cross-cultural dialogue. According respect and recognition 2
3 to previously marginalised groups, inviting their members to tell their own stories, 3
4 combining exhibits with educational programming and repatriating objects with 4
5 questionable provenances are now standard parts of museum practice. Various 5
6 museums, especially those in former settler societies with official policies of bi- 6
7 and multiculturalism, have done this with varying degrees of success (Bennett 7
8 2005, 46–70). 8
9 Meanwhile, others see museums as simply too flawed to redress their historical 9
10 wrongs. Ghassan Hage, writing of ‘zoological multiculturalism’, argues that all too 10
11 often museums become collections of otherness that display diversity as a national 11
12 possession (Hage 1998). Because the White majority still controls museums’ 12
13 discursive and visual tools, difference is too often depicted in an exaggeratedly 13

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14 self-referential, self-congratulatory manner. 14
15 Still a third view dismisses these criticisms. Writing in response to critics who 15
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see museum installations and museums themselves as ‘never not ideologically 16
motivated and strategically determined’, James Cuno asks his readers: ‘Is this 17
your experience of museums? Do you walk through the galleries of your local 18
museum and feel controlled in any significant way? Do you feel manipulated 19
by a higher power?’ (Cuno 2011, 44). He believes that museums still matter and 20
that ‘Enlightenment principles still apply’ (Cuno 2011, 7). Collecting, classifying 21
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22 and presenting facts, calling into question prejudice and superstition, and being 22
23 ‘confident in the promise of rigorous, intellectual inquiry to lead to truths about 23
24 the world for the benefit of human progress’ are still at the core of the museum’s 24
25 mission. 25
26 These arguments do not pay sufficient attention to how locality shapes museum 26
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27 practice. In the remainder of this chapter, I will briefly discuss two aspects of place 27
28 that constrain how much cultural institutions can change what they do – the role 28
29 that particular institutions play in the national and urban cultural distribution of 29
30 labour, and how the urban cultural armature shapes museum practice. 30
31 Boston plays a very particular role in the national museological landscape in 31
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32 the United States, just as the MFA plays a unique role in Boston’s organisational 32
33 field. Many tourists come to Boston to learn about colonial American history, 33
34 and the public expects the museum to tell that piece of the national story. The 34
35 museum’s reliance on visitor fees and benefactors’ donations limits just how much 35
36 the story of American art can be changed. ‘European art’, said Erica Hirshler, ‘is 36
37 not being asked to tell a story about European history in this context in the same 37
38 way that these objects are asked to tell our national story.’ 38
39 Similarly, the MFA plays a particular role in the urban organisational distribution 39
40 of labour. Just as few institutions could trump its role in telling regional colonial 40
41 history, few look to the MFA to be on the cutting edge of contemporary American 41
42 art. That is what the Institute for Contemporary Art and several New York cultural 42
43 institutions do. In contrast, the Peabody Essex Museum, located just north in 43
44 Salem, Massachusetts, can use its colonial holdings to tell a more global story 44

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 The Limits to Institutional Change 153

1 because for visitors it is not the ‘go-to’ place to learn about colonial America. ‘The 1
2 MFA’, said Hao Sheng, Wu Tung curator of Chinese Art, ‘is as global as a museum 2
3 in New England can be. It still has to meet the expectations of Euro-American 3
4 visitors.’ 4
5 A city’s economic and political genealogy and its early position in the 5
6 geopolitical hierarchy also shape the kinds of cultural institutions it creates and 6
7 how they reflect the nation and the world. The values and beliefs of early residents 7
8 sow seeds that become part of a city’s cultural institutions. These resilient cultural 8
9 structures, such as patterns of social hierarchy, commitments to the common good 9
10 or moral assumptions about community, appear and reappear throughout a city’s 10
11 history (Alexander and Smith 2003). As they become more deeply rooted over 11
12 time, they affect the kinds of institutions a city creates, the policies it embraces and 12
13 the values that undergird them – its ever-evolving cultural armature. 13

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14 Cities and nations also have deeply rooted ways of dealing with difference 14
15 – what we might call diversity management regimes – that respond to and shape 15
16 what cultural institutions do. These regimes reflect myths about who belongs to 16
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the nation and who can become a member. The United States tells itself it is a
country of immigrants, founded on principles of religious pluralism, which has
always succeeded at making newcomers into Americans. This historical legacy
and response to difference structure what cultural institutions do today and how
they get used (or not) to manage difference.
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22 How the MFA tells the story of the nation and its place in the globe, and the 22
23 objects it uses to tell it, reflect Boston’s cultural armature. John Winthrop, the 23
24 Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, led a ragged yet determined group 24
25 of disgruntled believers across the Atlantic Ocean to found what would become the 25
26 city of Boston. Because they believed that saved souls were also wealthy souls, 26
27 they stressed hard work, thrift and sobriety. They valued education, intellectual 27
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28 achievement and responsibility to the community at large. These traditions and 28

29 the institutions they established to preserve them laid the foundation for Boston’s 29
30 cultural armature. Even as early as the city’s twenty-fifth birthday, writes historian 30
31 Thomas O’Connor, the ‘town of Boston had developed certain basic themes that 31
32 were not only characteristic of its colonial origins but which also may be considered 32
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33 an essential part of its present- day distinctiveness’ (O’Connor 2006, 18). 33

34 Boston’s founders believed they were creating a city that would serve as a 34
35 model to the rest of the world. Their ‘city upon a hill’ would inspire all of 35
36 mankind, a shining beacon that would attract ‘the eyes of all people … upon’ them 36
37 (Winthrop 1838). Boston would never be just any city, but a place distinguished by 37
38 its accomplishments, achieved in God’s name, which benefited mankind. 38
39 Early on, however, the straitjacket of strict Puritan ideals began to fray 39
40 (Brown and Tager 2000). During the early eighteenth century, long-distant trade 40
41 flourished. As the port towns of Boston and Salem grew, so did the visibility of 41
42 different cultures and, more importantly, different ideas. But, by the nineteenth 42
43 century, many of these former sea captains had turned to manufacturing. By the 43
44 late 1820s, a strikingly interconnected, self-referential group of about forty Boston 44

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 154 The Postcolonial Museum

1 families, known as the Boston Associates, emerged and slowly assumed control of 1
2 the quickly modernising city. 2
3 Like their Puritan forefathers, this group also stressed public service. They 3
4 created institutions, not as individuals, but as a cohesive community that shared 4
5 economic interests as well as last names. By 1861, Oliver Wendell Holmes coined 5
6 the tag ‘Brahmin Caste of New England’ to describe what by then was the city’s 6
7 well-developed upper class. Elite Bostonians still felt the region represented and 7
8 communicated the best of what America offered morally and intellectually. To 8
9 them, the city was the ‘Hub of the Universe’, or at the very least the ‘Athens of 9
10 America’. 10
11 During the nineteenth century, however, diversity came to town. By 1849, 11
12 more than a quarter of Boston’s residents, at least 35,000, were Irish. To care for 12
13 and control these newcomers, the ruling elite founded charitable hospitals and 13

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14 dispensaries out of a sense of responsibility for the greater good, but also out of 14
15 a desire to maintain order. While the Irish rejected the proffered lectures on self- 15
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improvement, the city’s upper crust worried that newcomers eschewed hard work
in favour of disease, vice and crime. As Dalzell notes, ‘the Irish were not just
strangers, they were outsiders’ (Dalzell 1987, 140).
After the Civil War, Boston’s elite made even clearer distinctions between the
United States and Europe and between themselves and the increasing numbers
of foreign-born residents. The institutions they created reflected the conflicting
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22 legacies at the city’s core: a faith in elitism and the power of high culture alongside 22
23 an impulse to elevate the masses by introducing them to that culture; an interest in 23
24 and begrudging respect for cosmopolitanism combined with a sense that America 24
25 needed to chart its own way and that the city and the nation should be a model to 25
26 the rest of the world, and a suspicion that people who spent too much time abroad 26
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27 were possibly disloyal. 27

28 That is why, says Dorie Reents-Budet, the pre-Columbian materials are still ‘in 28
29 the basement. In another city, like Los Angeles, this stuff would have been on the 29
30 top floor, but Boston is a Northern European city, not a Latin American one.’ This 30
31 is, on the one hand, about ‘the browning of America, but it’s also about getting 31
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32 the white folks to recognise that this is okay. That these folks who are coming 32
33 from Latin America are coming from these countries with this incredible historical 33
34 heritage.’ 34
35 35
36 36
37 Conclusion 37
38 38
39 Discussions about the changing relationship between museums and their 39
40 communities need to take the role of locality into account. In this chapter, 40
41 I have argued that the urban cultural armature and the national and municipal 41
42 organisational distribution of labour strongly influence how museums represent 42
43 the nation and its place in the world, and also limit the extent to which museums 43
44 can change what they do. 44

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 The Limits to Institutional Change 155

1 Despite firm commitments by curators to diversify and internationalise the1

2 American art story, the new Art of the Americas Wing is still overwhelmingly a 2
3 celebration of the nation. Visitors expect this from the institution – it has long been
3
4 its role in the urban and national cultural landscape. Because it is privately funded, it
4
5 must continue to please its most loyal visitors and benefactors. 5
6 Moreover, Boston’s cultural armature, and the deeply held values from which
6
7 it grows, also limit the extent to which the museum can change course. Boston’s7
8 founders flirted with cosmopolitanism while strongly asserting their position as a
8
9 role model to the rest of the world. They felt responsible for ‘civilising’ the teeming
9
10 masses, but strictly forbade them from entering their clubs. 10
11 Demography also allowed the MFA to continue to tell a certain kind of story.
11
12 By 2010, the foreign-born made up 27 per cent of Boston’s population; they came
12
13 primarily from Asia and Latin America. But such significant diversity is a fairly
13

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14 recent development. Right through the 1980s, most of the city’s foreign-born 14
15 residents were of European origin, and they constituted a much smaller proportion
15
16 of the population (Lima 2012). Boston also continues to rank high on measures of
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residential segregation. Among the nation’s big cities, it ranks eleventh for the most
17
extreme residential segregation between Blacks and Whites. The metro area ranks
18
fifth in Asian–White segregation. In Hispanic–White segregation, it is fourth, behind
19
only Los Angeles, New York, and Newark (WBUR 2011). Until fairly recently, then,
20
the pressure to tell a different story that is latent in the city’s changing demography
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22 has been fairly limited. The city’s cultural institutions are now under more pressure
22
23 to respond to its shifting racial and ethnic makeup, but its persistently high levels
23
24 of residential segregation reveal that it still has a long way to go. Featuring the
24
25 pre-Columbian collection so prominently in the new Art of the Americas Wing was
25
26 a step in the right direction. The final piece of the cultural armature that shapes
26
27 museum practice is cultural policy. The city of Boston provides relatively little direct
27
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28 support to its cultural institutions and has no cohesive cultural policy. 28

29 Locality, then, constrains the possibilities for postcoloniality. The urban cultural
29
30 armature and the institutional distribution of labour create path dependency. 30
31 Museums are, after all, as one respondent put it, ‘made of bricks and mortar. They
31
32 are not an agile medium. They can only tell the stories their collections allow them
32
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33 to tell.’ What I have argued is that the arc of the narrative is not just determined by
33
34 what sits in the museum’s storerooms, but by the history, demography and policies
34
35 of cities themselves. 35
36 36
37 37
38 References 38
39 39
40 Alexander, Jeffrey and Paul Smith. 2010. ‘The Strong Program: Origins, 40
41 Achievements and Prospects’. In The Handbook of Cultural Sociology, edited 41
42 by John Hall, Laura Grindstaff and Ming-Cheng Lo. New York: Routledge. 42
43 Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and 43
44 Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. 44

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 156 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Bennett, Tony. 2006. ‘Exhibition, Difference, and The Logic of Culture’. In 1

2 Museum Frictions, edited by Ivan Karp, Corrine Kratz, Lynn Szwaja and 2
3 Tomas Ybarra-Frausto. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 3
4 Brown, Richard D. and Jack Tager. 2000. Massachusetts: A Concise History. 4
5 Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. 5
6 Center for the Future of Museums (CFM). 2008. Museums and Society 2034: 6
7 Trends and Potential Futures. Washington, DC: American Association of 7
8 Museums. Accessed 27 January 2013. http://www.aam-us.org/docs/center- 8
9 for-the-future-of-museums/museumssociety2034.pdf. 9
10 Cook, Greg. 2010. ‘OMFG: The New MFA’. Boston Phoenix, 17 November. 10
11 Accessed 5 February 2013. http://thephoenix.com/Boston/arts/111581- 11
12 omfg-the-new-mfa/. 12
13 Coombes, Annie. 2004. ‘Museums and the Formation of National and Cultural 13

y
14 Identities’. In Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, edited by Donald 14
15 Preziosi and Claire Fargo. Farnham: Ashgate. 15
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Cotter, Holland. 2010. ‘Art of the Americas Wing at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:
Seating All the Americas at the Same Table’. New York Times, 18 November.
Cuno, James B. 2011. Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Dalzell, Robert F. 1987. Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World
They Made. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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22 Dias, Nelia. 2007. ‘Cultural Difference and Cultural Diversity: The Case of the 22
23 Musée du Quai Branly’. In Museums and Difference, edited by Daniel J. 23
24 Sherman. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press. 24
25 DiMaggio, Paul. 2004. ‘Gender, Networks, and Cultural Capital’. Poetics 32(3): 25
26 99–103. 26
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27 Duncan, Carol and Alan Wallach. 2004. ‘The Universal Survey Museum’. 27
28 In Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, edited by Bettina Messias 28
29 Carbonell. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. 29
30 Fargo, Claire and Donald Preziosi, eds. 2004. Grasping the World: The Idea of the 30
31 Museum. Farnham: Ashgate. 31
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32 Hage, Ghassan. 2000. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a 32

33 Multicultural Society. New York: Routledge, in association with Annandale, 33
34 New South Wales: Pluto Press Australia. 34
35 Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. 1992. Museums and the Shaping to Knowledge. 35
36 London: Routledge. 36
37 ——. 2000. Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture. London: Routledge. 37
38 Lima, Alvaro. 2012. ‘Newly Released Publication: New Bostonians 2012’. Boston, 38
39 MA: Boston Redevelopment Authority, 12 October. Accessed 26 February 39
40 2013. http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthoritynews.org/2012/10/12/ 40
41 newly-released-publication-new-bostonians-2012/. 41
42 Macdonald, Sharon J. 2003. ‘Museums, National, Post-national, and Transcultural 42
43 Identities’. Museums and Society 1(1): 1–16. 43
44 44

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 The Limits to Institutional Change 157

1 Mason, Rianna. 2007. Museums, Nations, Identities: Wales and Its National 1
2 Museums. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 2
3 McClellan, Andrew. 2007. ‘Art Museums and Commonality: A History of High 3
4 Ideals’. In Museums and Difference, edited by Daniel J. Sherman. Bloomington, 4
5 IN: University of Indiana Press. 5
6 O’Connor, Thomas H. 2006. The Athens of America: Boston, 1825–1845. Amherst, 6
7 MA: University of Massachusetts Press. 7
8 WBUR. 2011. ‘2010 Census Shows Boston Among Most Segregated Cities’. 8
9 Radio Boston, 4 April. Accessed 3 March 2013. http://radioboston.wbur. 9
10 org/2011/04/04/boston-segregated. 10
11 Winthrop, John. 1838. ‘A Modell of Christian Charity (1630)’. Collections of 11
12 the Massachusetts Historical Society 3(7). Accessed 3 March 2013. http:// 12
13 history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html. 13

y
14 Zolberg, Vera. 1996. ‘Museums as Contested Sites of Remembrance: The Enola 14
15 Gay Affair’. In Theorizing Museums: Representing Identity and Diversity in a 15
16 Changing World, edited by Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe. Cambridge, 16
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 Part IV
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Representation and Beyond 4
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 1 Chapter 12 1
2 2
3 The Incurable Image: Curation and 3
4 4
5 Repetition on a Tri-continental Scene 5
6 6
7 Tarek Elhaik 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 Curation is the state of exception that has become the rule. Like ethnography, 12
13 curation has become the air we now all breathe. The routinisation of both 13

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14 ethnography and professional curatorial practice seems to be a symptom of a 14
15 collective malaise in contemporary culture. Professional curatorial practice, 15
specifically, as the dominant form of curation and modality of relation, threatens
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to drain the real of its future anterior, of its capacity to generate change through
complex repetitions. This chapter is an attempt to grapple with and resist the
normalisation of dominant forms of curation in contemporary life.
This re-evaluation of curation stems primarily from my research location at the
border between cinema studies, visual culture studies and media anthropology. During
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22 the course of my fieldwork, I have learned many lessons from collaborative dialogues 22
23 with colleagues and interlocutors whose vocation is to reflect on the ontological 23
24 and epistemological status of contemporary curatorial practices. I have benefited, 24
25 in particular, from curators, anthropologists, film and art historians, psychoanalysts, 25
26 cultural theorists, pedagogues and philosophers who have generously guided me 26
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27 while I was conducting a long-term ethnography of intellectual and curatorial life in 27

28 Mexico City.1 Like many scholars, artists and other creative researchers, I too was 28
29 attracted to the contemporary art-alternative-to-academia thesis. Like many, I too 29
30 have quickly been disappointed by initially promising curatorial efforts that ended 30
31 up squandering the very potentialities that ignited those hopes in the first place. More 31
and more we witness institutional critiques and collective curatorial efforts gone
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32 32
33 awry. Often, these culminate in blatant displays of power reminiscent of academic 33
34 posturing that convert the potentially horizontal into the powers of the vertical, and 34
35 the difficult ‘public use of reason’ into a surrender to normative institutional models, 35
36 the star system and the congregation of usual suspects (often ‘representatives’ of 36
37 and cultural elite from the post-colony). Indeed, one should be perplexed by the 37
38 increasing ‘dominant’ role played by certain curators in their shaping the terms 38
39 under which public life ought to be lived and cared for. 39
40 40
41 1 I have learned much about the ethnographic and curatorial turn from discussions 41
42 with the late Olivier Debroise, Maria Ines Canal, Fiamma Montezemolo, Jose Luis Barrios, 42
43 Jesse Lerner, Cuauhtemoc Medina, Rogelio Villareal, Osvaldo Sanchez, Tayana Pimentel, 43
44 Lucia Sanroman and Roger Bartra. 44

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 162 The Postcolonial Museum

1 As new figures of the public intellectual, curators have managed to create 1

2 status for their practice by capturing the desires of academics too often 2
3 trapped in their lonely ivory towers. The latter, eager to breathe a bit of fresh 3
4 air and to achieve visibility through art institutions, unhesitatingly consent 4
5 to supply concepts to these omnivorous curators and cultural mediators too 5
6 busy programming ‘one damn thing after another’. Within this ideological 6
7 framework, deals and alliances are made through a clever use of the vague, 7
8 emblematic figure of research (in particular ethnography) that often culminates 8
9 in ostentatious displays. More often than not, ‘the art world’s penchant for the 9
10 frivolous and its coziness with an ascendant oligarchy can only confound – or 10
11 even offend’ (Lee 2012). 11
12 12
13 13

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It is often argued that the hegemonic ascent of the curator in contemporary
culture belongs to the historical process of formation of the bourgeois public
sphere, the autonomisation of art, the intensification of the rule of experts
responsible for diagnosing and caring for our lives, and the emergence of
guardians of the social link from the figure of the Human Rights Activist to
that of the Cultural Mediator. Moreover, the rise of these figures of care and
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22 mediation runs parallel to the subsequent de-politicisation of the social link. 22
23 There seems to be a compulsive attempt in secular, liberal, democratic public 23
24 cultures to draw the contours of freedom and emancipation through carefully 24
25 staged processes of mediations and monitored productions of stable subject 25
26 positions anchored in territorialised forms: nation, region, city, continent and 26
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27 so on. In fact, this historical background continues to be productive today and 27

28 very much informs the field of contemporary curatorial practice. As a form of 28
29 use of public reason deeply moulded by the ascent of both the rule of expertise 29
30 and the nationalist-cosmopolitan bourgeoisie, the curator’s form of curation is 30
31 none the less constantly threatened by unpredictable visceral outbursts that do 31
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32 not lend themselves to immunisation. The status of their form of curation is in 32

33 fact beginning to morph and ‘cool down’ into something close to what Jean-Paul 33
34 Sartre once called the ‘practico-inert’: 34
35 35
36 The Practico-inert has an intimate relation to the notion of seriality. In order to 36
37 define a series, Sartre takes the famous example of the queue that forms every 37
38 morning at a bus stop. The bus queue is an expression of seriality, of a ‘plurality 38
39 of isolations’. The queue is a crowd in the sense that individuals who share the 39
40 same objective – to get on the bus – come together in the same physical space. 40
41 But every individual in that queue tends to see every other with hostility, as 41
42 a potential competitor for a limited resource – a seat on the bus. Each is an 42
43 obstacle to the aims of the others. Each person is indifferentiated, the only unity 43
44 being the practico-inert everyone is waiting for, the bus. (Malik 2010) 44

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 The Incurable Image 163

1 The current proliferation of biennales and triennales, for instance, is a symptom of 1

2 the automatisms in the curatorial economy and apparatus of contemporary art. It is 2
3 a perfect example of both masterful deployments of the Kantian notion of the use 3
4 of public reason and Sartrian seriality and repetition. Therefore, one ought to ask 4
5 whether this specific use of public reason can continue to constitute a beginning. My 5
6 point of departure, my bus stop, so to speak, is ‘ethnographic’ in both the strict and 6
7 expanded sense of the term. In the strict sense, I am both a media anthropologist and 7
8 a moving-image curator sceptical of the procedures at work under the regime of the 8
9 so-called ethnographic turn in contemporary art. In an expanded sense, because it is 9
10 the deployment of the emblematic figure of ethnography that has, to a certain extent, 10
11 prompted many a professional curator to perform spectacular tightrope walking acts 11
12 that too often ended up stunting the potential of ethnography to make something 12
13 creative, ethical, and political by adopting a ‘radically different epistemology 13

y
14 founded on the luminal’ (Crapanzano 2004, 8). 14
15 Contemporary curatorial work, under the regime of ethnography, has 15
16 paradoxically shifted towards power and away from potentiality, to put it in 16
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Deleuzian terms, towards the monarch and away from those promising practices
of freedom. Ethnography has become the alibi that has created new figures of
curatorial sovereignty. It is now not only the King but also the Curator who
cares for our lives. And the Curator (dispatching and summoning more and more
cultural mediators in the so-called postcolonial periphery) cares for us through
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22 the powers of the sovereign. It is the professional curator who condenses, with a 22
23 productivity that should alarm us, three models of power: sovereignty, discipline 23
24 and control. In light of this, I ask: how do we resist this three-pronged actualisation 24
25 of power in the context of our societies of control where curation has become the 25
26 state of exception in which we all live? Can we imagine amidst these regimes a 26
27 ‘real’ curatorial state of exception, as Benjamin once put it? Should we perhaps 27
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28 align these resistant forms of curation with the increasing concern among those 28
29 psychoanalysts actively engaged in the polis to answer the following vital question: 29
30 ‘should we not prevent the discourse of the analyst from being re-inscribed into 30
31 one of the three other discourses: master, university, hysteric?’ (Chiesa 2005). 31
32 I join the many who try painstakingly to keep both distance and proximity 32
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33 from the binary economy and historical compromise between academic and 33
34 contemporary art worlds. Fellow dwellers in those adjacent, ethico-aesthetic and 34
35 existential territories resisting incorporation and annexation into increasingly neo- 35
36 liberal academic and contemporary art worlds have begun to take issue with two 36
37 paradoxical features characteristic of majoritarian curatorial culture.2 First, we 37
38 interpret the gluttonous inclusion of geographic regions and provinces under the 38
39 cosmopolitan rule of curatorial empire and its attendant logic of representation as 39
40 40
41 2 I borrow the concept of adjacency from Paul Rabinow. The goal of anthropological 41
42 inquiry is ‘identifying, understanding, and formulating something actual neither by directly 42
43 identifying with it nor by making it exotic. Rather, it seeks to articulate a mode of adjacency’ 43
44 (Rabinow 2007, 49). 44

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 164 The Postcolonial Museum

1 a paradoxical effect of the postcolonial and the pluralisation of cultural practices. 1

2 Second, we see the widening chasm between art, ethnography and life as a 2
3 paradoxical effect of the age of so-called ‘documentary turns’ with its attendant 3
4 participatory events, social art practices, and artists and curators-as-ethnographers.3 4
5 Even more troubling is the gradual expansion of curatorial practice into all regions 5
6 of life (curating dinners, lectures, conferences, the rituals of relational aesthetics, 6
7 and so on), on the one hand, and, on the other, the increasing indifference towards 7
8 the basic clinical, ethical and practical etymological register evoked by the word 8
9 ‘curation’.4 Curate: from Middle English curate, ‘member of the clergy’; from 9
10 Latin curates (same meaning) and cura, ‘spiritual charge of souls’; from earlier 10
11 cura, ‘care, healing’. 11
12 Furthermore, the postcolonial museum cannot be thought of outside of its 12
13 current contract with the university and its attendant form of care and pedagogy. 13

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14 The point is not to worry about whether the curator’s form of curation and research 14
15 is ‘being subsumed by the academy and its associated discourses and economy’, 15
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or that we should unify ‘the divergent epistemologies that underpin the creative
arts, humanities, social and physical sciences’ into a universal science of curation
(Biggs 2013). Indeed, the curator and the academic will continue to be intimately
linked, even taking pleasure in switching roles and trading places from time to
time. Yet the current form of alliance between art institutions and the university
is a historical form of contract and exchange that remains, in the final instance,
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22 contingent. Because of this, it cannot be exonerated from the logic of capitalist 22
23 exchange on humanist, universal or transcendental grounds, or by the increasingly 23
24 dubious claim that the university and the museum foster, more than any other 24
25 institutional context, (neo-)avant-garde forms of care and pedagogy. How can they, 25
26 given their anomic and hierarchical structures that seldom enable a shared work 26
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27 of mourning? The news is not so gloomy, as some academics and institutional 27

28 curators have already begun to seize on the potentiality immanent to the field of 28
29 curation in the most open sense of the term (Cohen 2010; Lee 2012; Montezemolo 29
30 and Sanroman 2005; Preziosi 2003; Sanchez 2006). 30
31 31
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32 32
33 3 If we put aside Hal Foster’s narrow use of examples and understanding of 33
34 anthropology as ‘the science of alterity’, his astute critique of the artist-as-ethnographer 34
35 can be extended to the problematic re-appropriation of the figure of the ethnographer by 35
36 the team of curators-as-ethnographers at the recent triennale Intense Proximité at Palais de 36
37 Tokyo in Paris. 37
38 4  This etymological register is explored, for instance, in the curatorial work and 38
publications of the Mexico City-based collective and journal Curare. From a different
39 39
set of geopolitical concerns Boris Groys’s (2009) work is among the finest theoretical
40 40
elaborations of curation as a figure of health and illness in contemporary culture. I do share
41 his view of the artwork as ontologically ill and in need of curation, applaud his spatial 41
42 deployment of the cinematic moving-image as a disturbance to traditional forms of display, 42
43 but am sceptical of his commitment to the museum as the paradigmatic institution where 43
44 cures are dispensed. 44

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 The Incurable Image 165

1 More importantly, other forms of curation are yet to be imagined that will be 1
2 unrecognisable to both academics and professional curators. These other forms 2
3 of curation will encourage and foster other relational assemblages, transference, 3
4 counter-transference, and unruly modes of access to and production of unconscious 4
5 material. Since this unconscious material cannot be accessed or produced in a 5
6 cultural institution like the museum, either it may partially re-direct and divert 6
7 the museum or the biennale from their institutional telòs and social finality (an 7
8 unlikely outcome), or it will be able to come up with other forms of instalments 8
9 beyond both contemporary art and academic institutional settings. It is my gnawing 9
10 intuition that the forms of curation to come will return to their ethical and clinical 10
11 vocation by re-investing social spaces where the rapport between care and the 11
12 incurable is the point of departure. 12
13 The public and private use of reason ought, perhaps, to be counteracted by 13

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14 something intractable (incurable and untreatable). Indeed, some of us feel that we 14
15 have to re-take the task of curation and its vocation to short-circuit and resist these 15
16 dominant routes and maps, resist the professionalisation of everyday life and the 16
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‘assimilation’ of entire geographies under the rule of the Curator.5 These other forms
of curation would enable us to circumvent the politics of the social link and the
‘political economy of belonging’ (Massumi 2002, 68) at work in majoritarian art
curatorial practice. It would enable us to think with media arts, with the lives of
others, with alterity, with difference in itself and iterative assemblages that produce
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22 unexpected repetitions, the intractability of our personal and collective pathologies, 22
23 and so on. My aim here is to rethink the term ‘work’ in curatorial work, reinsert 23
24 curation within a larger intellectual history of practical deployment of concepts 24
25 at once clinical and critical, re-engage the tradition of the anthropologie du lien, 25
26 and reclaim the clinical genealogy of curation by inserting it within a history of 26
27 postcolonial disorders. This re-insertion of curation within a history of disorders is 27
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28 not metaphorical: it has affinities with the central question of what is curative in the 28
29 psychoanalytic process. In order to answer this question, we first ought to take into 29
30 account the crucial distinction between the professional curator’s form of curation 30
31 (one hinged primarily on a medical-interventionist model of care; the curator’s 31
32 operation is not unlike the surgeon’s) and the form of curation that would be more 32
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33 treatment-oriented and psychoanalytically inflected by an ethics of the incurable. 33

34 As I have already noted, my reflections on the clinical dimension of curation 34
35 owe a great deal to interlocutors with whom I have had the chance to discuss these 35
36 matters while I was conducting an ethnography of curatorial laboratories in Mexico 36
37 City. Consider, for instance, the interventionist clinical-conceptual framework of 37
38 the multi-disciplinary group Teratoma, where art historians and critics, curators, 38
39 artists and anthropologists explore contemporary shifts in cultural, intellectual 39
40 and aesthetic productions from a wide range of practices, engaging the effects 40
41 of economic globalisation and the mutation of cultural geopolitics, aiming at 41
42 42
43 5  Psychoanalysis invites us to evaluate the notion of resistance ‘as both a defence and 43
44 an authentic category of being’. 44

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 166 The Postcolonial Museum

1 creating intercultural networks and circuits. In the words of Cuauhtémoc Medina, 1

2 co-founder of the Teratoma group and Associate Curator of Latin American Art at 2
3 Tate Modern: 3
4 4
5 Teratoma is a site of encounters, debates, exhibitions, residencies, pedagogy, 5
6 dialogues, archiving of textual, visual, physical and virtual information in order 6
7 to allow production, debate and reception of the various cultures to come in our 7
8 continent. … For now, we have decided to adopt TERATOMA as a provisional 8
9 name for our group. As some of you may already know, the name comes to us 9
10 from pathology: it is a denomination that refers to a type of tumor that has the 10
11 nasty particularity to generate all kind of cell types, but without organization. 11
12 As a result of a failure in the cellular reproductive mechanism, often due to the 12
13 latency of embryonic cells or to genetic disorder, Teratoma has the tendency 13

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14 to grow in the body by combining, in a quasi-monstrous way, neuronal tissue 14
15 with pelvic bones, semen with mammal glands, and so on Teratoma appears 15
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like a double of the affected body, perfectly identical to it, yet acting as its
twin, without top or bottom, left or right, or distinction between function and
localization. Teratoma is a metaphor that stands for the rejection of at once the
ideal architecture of culture and the evolutionist imaginary. It is the illness of
a regression to chaos by a colony of cells that acts parasitically towards the
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21 symbolic apparatus.6
22 22
23 The image of Mexico City as a metastasised urban sprawl has earned the 23
24 monster the name of ‘the Tumor City’ (Serra 2005).7 Teratoma was deployed 24
25 by its founders as an oncological metaphor, both site-specific and practical to a 25
26 framing of a curatorial intervention in the body politic of a post-revolutionary 26
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27 political culture ailing from what anthropologist Roger Bartra has diagnosed as 27
28 a ‘melancholic post-Mexican condition’. In contrast, but in continuity with the 28
29 dialogues initiated with the anthropologists, art historians, artists and curators who 29
30 were then members of Teratoma, I began to understand the work of curation as an 30
31 ethnography-based evaluation of this Mexico City-centred clinical landscape, and 31
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32 eventually as a search for an exit from what might be called an onto-oncological 32

33 form of intervention and conceptualisation.8 The very word ‘teratoma’ recruits a 33
34 34
35 35
36 6  Conversations with several members of Teratoma took place in the context of my 36
37 ethnography of curatorial laboratories in Mexico City during 2004–2007. I am particularly 37
38 grateful to Cuauhtémoc Medina for sharing with me, in private conversation, the founding 38
document that I quote here, in which he delineates with remarkable rigour the conceptual
39 39
contours, geopolitical concerns and curatorial objectives of this interdisciplinary group.
40 40
7  Sierra is also known for his installation work that performs corporeal inscriptions on
41 the bodies of marginal forms of life, undocumented migrants, sex workers, street children: 41
42 that is, forms of life reduced to bare life or diagnosed with incurable illnesses. 42
43 8  ‘Cancerous tissue: each instant, each second, a cell becomes cancerous, mad, 43
44 proliferates, and loses its configuration, takes over everything, the organism must submit 44

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1 Nietzschean ethics of dosages and maps it on the vitalistic ontology of so-called 1

2 peripheral national cultures such as Mexico’s. Moreover, it evokes and suggests 2
3 a revision of the national body politic through a symptomatology hinting at an 3
4 emerging cartography of intrusion. Teratoma, as illness, diagnosis and form 4
5 of curation, may even help us locate an ‘originary susceptibility of the post- 5
6 colonial [or peripheral] nation-state to intrusion’ (Pheng 1999, 239). It enables 6
7 us to conceptually explore questions of ‘immunisations’ and curation of the body 7
8 politic. Yet, in the end, it dangerously extends the aggressive model of the curator 8
9 as surgeon (at worst) and benevolent caregiver (at best). 9
10 Teratoma’s curatorial onto-oncology is certainly a rigorous curatorial model 10
11 that intensifies the relationship between the critical and the clinical. It does indeed 11
12 point to other forms of curation. Yet I feel inclined to go only so far with it: we 12
13 need to underscore Teratoma’s limits, the model of aggression and intrusion it 13

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14 relies on and celebrates as the only mode of achieving the dissolution of a certain 14
15 postcolonial nationalist horizon. It enters the de-territorialised regions of the 15
16 incurable: a complex, psychoanalytical concept. Indeed, the notion of therapeutic 16
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action in psychoanalysis that informs the form of curation I’m driving at is in
productive tension with the cures of the onco-curator. But the very nature of
Teratoma’s curation runs the risk of subsuming the psychoanalytical ethics of the
incurable within the perspective of a medical epistemology that ultimately cannot
be reconciled with it:
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23 Indeed, care is not treatment. When we speak of treatment within psychoanalysis, 23
24 we are in an entirely other register than that of care. Psychoanalysis delimits a 24
25 domain of application in which the concepts and practices of care are hardly 25
26 applicable. One will thus say that a psychiatrist cares and that a psychoanalyst 26
27 treats. An interesting French idiom allows us to underscore this difference. When 27
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28 one says of someone that he is intraitable, this means that he is intractable, that 28
29 he refuses to compromise his principles. In more Lacanian terms, one could say 29
30 that he refuses to give up on his desire. The notion of psychoanalytic treatment is 30
31 of this same order. Contrary to care, which centers on the action of the caregiver 31
32 or the team of caregivers, the notion of treatment is centered on the relation 32
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33 between the subject and something without which his very existence would no 33
34 longer matter to him/her – that which, in psychoanalysis, we call his desire. 34
35 (Apollon 2006, 26) 35
36 36
37 Teratoma’s onco-curation and conceptual strategy extends a certain Avant-Gardist 37
38 and interventionist tendency in Mexican experimental media arts and moving- 38
39 image culture. This continuity suggests a reliance on the philosophical tradition of 39
40 vitalist organicism. A parallel can be established with yet another Mexican model 40
41 41
42 to its rules or re-stratifies it, not only for its own survival, but also to make an escape from 42
43 the organism, the fabrication of the “other” BwO on the place of consistency’ (Deleuze and 43
44 Guattari 1987, 163). 44

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 168 The Postcolonial Museum

1 of infusion into the diseased body politic, found in Rubén Gámez’s powerful 1
2 experimental film La Fórmula Secreta (1965). The film opens with an image 2
3 of dimly lit drains and tubes plunged in darkness and connected to an invisible, 3
4 unidentifiable body. As the camera slowly tilts downward reaching the lower part 4
5 of the frame, a fast-paced moving image of a shadow of a vulture (the mythological 5
6 carcass-eating zopilote) spectrally hovering over the Zócalo is released, the 6
7 nationalist public square par excellence. Who is being inoculated, who is being 7
8 immunised, what are the limits of diagnosis and therapeutics – Curatorial Work as 8
9 symptomatology? – dosed as virulent responses to a self-triggered immunological 9
10 crisis? What phantoms are these, where are they descending from? What are the 10
11 disorders plaguing the post-Mexican condition? Who are these non-authored 11
12 curators? And is the Eagle of La Fórmula Secreta searching for the Serpent? The 12
13 Serpent of Aztec Mythology, as a figure of migrations and mestizo modernity? The 13

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14 Serpent of Asclepius, as a semiological figure of medicine (semiotiki in ancient 14
15 Greece referred to symptoms)? 15
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Can these images be the point of departure for a ‘de-medicalised curatorial
ethics’, as Cuban curator Osvaldo Sanchez once remarked?9 Whether we are
willing or not to think through them, both Gamez’s and Teratoma’s images intensify
in productive ways the relation between organic and inorganic life that constitutes
the postcolonial and post-revolutionary national cultures. The intensification
of the relation between the organic and inorganic at ‘work’ in these images is a
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22 harbinger of a new figure of freedom, resistance and working-through in collective 22
23 formations and subjects that we none the less have outgrown. It therefore proceeds 23
24 from the observation that: 24
25 25
26 the metaphor that has replaced the living organism as the most apposite metaphor 26
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27 for freedom today is that of the ghost. It is epitomized by the post-colonial 27

28 nation, whose haunted life or susceptibility to a kind of death that cannot be 28
29 unequivocally delimited and transcended suggests the need to reconceptualize 29
30 freedom’s relation to finitude. (Pheng 2003, 383) 30
31 31
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32 I will venture that the mode in which we have outgrown the living organism, as 32
33 ghosts with anthropofagic desires and appetites, ought not to be ‘curated’ in medical 33
34 terms. A combination of both a Deleuzian clinic and a psychoanalytical ethics of 34
35 the incurable might be appropriate to carry out our works of curation amidst frankly 35
36 depressed and depressing affective, aesthetic and political landscapes. Indeed, it 36
37 could be lived, experienced and conceptualised in joyful terms that escape the 37
38 affective dual economy of melancholia and enthusiasm characteristic of post- 38
39 Enlightenment political modernity. I am proposing a form of mourning generated 39
40 by the predicament that haunts the postcolonial museum we are collectively 40
41 fabulating on and imagining in this symposium and collection of essays. This 41
42 form of mourning might help us understand the ethico-political and therapeutic 42
43 43
44 9  Personal conversation with Osvaldo Sanchez at In/Site meetings in Tijuana. 44

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1 implications of the replacement of the living organism by the ghost. This secession 1
2 of the ghost from the living organism is the form of curation of our postcolonial 2
3 national cultures and societies of control. Shedding the living organism as the main 3
4 metaphor of the disciplined postcolonial nation will be accompanied (cheerfully, 4
5 I might add) with the disappearance of both postcolonial cosmopolitanism and 5
6 nationalism, to make room for another form of inhabiting the postcolonial nation 6
7 under the sign of the ghost. The ghost is anything but a cosmopolitan national. The 7
8 ghost is only an intensification of the zone of mediation between the organic and 8
9 the inorganic. It is the task of curation that is often neglected by artists, academics, 9
10 curators, cultural producers and so on. 10
11 11
12 12
13 The Incurable Image 13

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14 14
15 My task as a media anthropologist and moving image curator, in this context, is 15
16 neither to be hopeful nor pessimistic about this secession, only to ‘invent new 16
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weapons’ (Deleuze 1995, 182) to resist in new forms, as the former generation
– that is, the decolonisation generation – did through the then apposite metaphor
of the living organism. Militant cinemas and ‘militant images’ of the 1960s, such
as Gamez’s La Formula Secreta, operate as a figure of the living organism ‘in
anguish’, to cite one of Glauber Rocha’s film titles. The oncological metaphors
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22 and images I’ve been engaging in this chapter are such weapons, nothing more and 22
23 nothing less. They are images that index a form of curation that has affinities not to 23
24 medical care, but to psychoanalytic treatment and therapeutic action: 24
25 25
26 This notion of treatment requires a radical experience on the part of the subject 26
27 that calls into question his relation to something that is as important to him as the 27
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28 apple of his eye [la prunelle de ses yeux]. It thus calls for a rethinking of the very 28
29 foundations of a being’s existence and his relations to others. In order for it to 29
30 be considered a treatment, its particularity must reside in the analyst’s desire to 30
31 constrain the subject to assume an ethical position with respect to the knowledge 31
32 derived from the experience. The problematic of treatment implies that the 32
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33 objective is to assume the consequences of such a knowledge and thus to take 33

34 ethical responsibility toward oneself and toward others. This ethical constraint 34
35 upon the position of the subject with respect to the knowledge derived from the 35
36 experience and its consequences is the very object of psychoanalytic treatment. 36
37 This position led Freud to recommend to Tausk that he terminate the analysis 37
38 of a patient whose ethics seemed to him clearly insufficient. Treatment consists 38
39 therefore in undertaking a radical experience that gives access to a knowledge; 39
40 and the analyst expects that the first consequence of this knowledge will be a 40
41 mutation of the ethical position of the patient. (Apollon 2006, 26) 41
42 42
43 I call incurable images those images that host this uncanny ‘mutation of the ethical 43
44 position of the patient’. I would like to also suggest that incurable images are 44

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 170 The Postcolonial Museum

1 fundamentally modes of inheritance. I am interested in incurable images that point 1

2 to complex modes of inheriting decolonisation. These moving images enable the 2
3 mode of curation I have been hinting at here, somewhere between a Deleuzian 3
4 symptomatology and the psychoanalytical ethics of the incurable. Incurable 4
5 images are sites of complex repetitions and zones of endurance for the spectator- 5
6 patient who manages to bypass the enclosure of traumatic wounds by official 6
7 narratives from both left and right sides of the politico-ideological spectrum. They 7
8 are tormented by the impersonal forces of history, as noted by some psychoanalysts 8
9 and psychoanalytical anthropologists (Benslama 2009; Crapanzano 2011; 9
10 Pandolfo 1998; Pandolfo 2013). Not unlike ‘the larger historical dimension in 10
11 which both patients and analysts are situated’ (Davoine and Gaudillère 2006, 11
12 15), a dimension of spectatorship seems to haunt the rapport between history and 12
13 trauma (in the psychoanalytical sense) or between history and becoming (in the 13

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14 Deleuzian sense). Profoundly ethical, this dimension can be inserted in the context 14
15 of a form of curation-as-clinical-practice, the aim of which is to bring creative 15
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I would like to conclude with a dialogue I have been having with the
Columbian artist Carlos Castro, and a recent piece of his in particular. It is an
allegorical image of politico-symbolic decay in Bogota’s Plaza Central, an image
that assigns allegorical status to a symbol of postcoloniality. It has affinities with
the photogram from Ruben Gamez’s La Formula Secreta, in that it too is an image
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22 of a ghost that hovers around another post-revolutionary nationalist public square 22
23 par excellence. Carlos Castro describes his public installation That Which Does 23
24 Not Suffer Does Not Live (Figure 12.1) in the following terms: 24
25 25
26 an installation in Bogotá’s main plaza in which I made a replica of a Simón 26
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27 Bolívar statue out of pigeon food and placed it in the same location. Pedestrians 27
28 were able to contemplate the transformation of a statue of Colombia’s founding 28
29 father as it was eaten by pigeons for 12 hours.10 29
30 30
31 In this public, time-based installation, anthropofagic desire is actualised as a 31
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32 relation between the symbolic figure of both pan-Latin Americanism and Third 32
33 World liberation movements (Bolivar statues can be found in major squares in 33
34 cities from Cairo’s Tahrir Square to San Francisco’s UN Plaza), a nationalist use of 34
35 public space with potential cosmopolitan implications (including shedding doubts 35
36 on the future of cosmopolitanism as a useful concept and ethico-political horizon) 36
37 and an (undesired and abjected) urban non-human species. 37
38 Not unlike Walter Benjamin’s image of the Angel of History, Castro’s public 38
39 installation can be read allegorically in so far that it sets in motion an assemblage 39
40 that wrestles with and mediates a schizophrenic historical sense. This provisional 40
41 assemblage disrupts the public status of Bogota’s Plaza Central and opens up a 41
42 passage between a historiographic matrix and a constellation of affect out which 42
43 43
44 10 Carlos Castro, private email conversation with the author. 44

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1 1
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Figure 12.1 Carlos Castro, That Which Does Not Suffer Does Not Live,
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22 Bogota, 2010. Reproduced courtesy of the artist 22
23 23
24 24
25 unstable subject positions are produced. While everything is set up for a symbolic 25
26 reading of the scene, I want to suggest that Castro’s installation has produced 26
27 a form of image that also can be called an ‘incurable image’: one that not only 27
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28 eschews a diagnosis that privileges disruptions brought to the symbolic order of 28

29 the Nation (which it does, needless to say), but that disorients us by forcing us to 29
30 return to chaotic affects that cannot be curated in the professional sense of the term. 30
31 It does so, I will argue, by providing us with a way out from the cosmopolitan- 31
32 national fantasies that agitate the postcolonial imaginary, on the one hand, and 32
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33 provides us with another mode of curation for our societies of control. The 33
34 becoming-imperceptible of Bolivar displaces the body politic and visual culture of 34
35 the Nation onto another scene. I call this ‘the Tricontinental scene’: a volatile zone 35
36 of mediation populated with incurable images such as Castro’s where we are asked 36
37 to emancipate ourselves from figures of sovereignty (the monarch, the militant, the 37
38 curator), on the one hand, and the moral landscapes and affective geographies of 38
39 cosmopolitan nationalism and Third Worldism, on the other. It might even require 39
40 us to think of other forms of collectivity through a different deployment of images. 40
41 What ethical and affective implication can be drawn from incurable images? 41
42 What politics of the unconscious is to be found in the becoming-imperceptible of 42
43 Bolivar? Is this something reminiscent of a Warburgian dynamogram? Does the 43
44 effacement of Bolivar’s effigy actualise what Alberto Moreiras (2001) has called 44

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1 ‘the exhaustion of difference and the emergence of a second Latin Americanism’ 1

2 that would inaugurate a post-nationalist and post-cosmopolitan work of mourning? 2
3 What form of repetition does the work of mourning carried out by incurable 3
4 images point to? 4
5 As a moving image curator and media anthropologist, I try to pay careful 5
6 attention to the ethico-affective operation underlying the clinical concept of 6
7 ‘curation’. It is an outline of curation from the pathic point of view of images. 7
8 This shift in attention would require us to both engage the production of images 8
9 as a radically de-authored process and to displace our subjectivities towards 9
10 a commitment to the pathos of images that have a life and death of their own. 10
11 This ought to be achieved not by simply displacing the dyadic relation between 11
12 analysand and analyst onto that of moving image and curator and onto that of 12
13 spectator and screen, as in classic psychoanalytic visual and media theory. It 13

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14 would have to put us in the role of analysand, and the moving image in that of 14
15 the analyst. We are images’ clinical pictures, they repeat us as symptoms, and 15
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we repeat them as diagnosis. The task of curation would then be one committed 16
to participating in collective processes and to forging therapeutic communities 17
through intractable and incurable desires encountered in images. We are the 18
hinterlands of images, nothing more and nothing less: we are images’ expressions, 19
bas-relief from the chaotic and infinite world of images, and not the other way 20
around, in which images are formulated as mere representations of our collective 21
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22 and personal ordeals, subjectivities, lives, realities and so on. The task of curation 22
23 that emerges from this is both anonymous and therapeutic, tending to and caring 23
24 for iterative assemblages in contemporary visual culture. 24
25 In light of this, I take the ‘work’ in curatorial work as a composite form of 25
26 working-through that wavers between two ethical traditions: a psychoanalytical 26
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27 ethics of mourning that laments and re-elaborates the loss and failures that affect 27
28 us, and a Deleuzian symptomatology, full of belief in the future, that also laments 28
29 the material returned by the Real, but does so by joyfully seeking to re-assemble 29
30 and re-actualise those imperceptible potentialities crushed by dominant and 30
31 indifferent agencies of symbolisation.11 The work of curation, like the Deleuzian 31
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32 and psychoanalytical ethical operations, begins with a form of attention and care 32
33 for signs of imperceptible potentialities that lay dormant in sites of complex 33
34 repetition. This imperceptible, this pathic dimension of curation, is found in 34
35 what I have called ‘the incurable image’. It is incurable in a double sense. In the 35
36 professional and institutional sense of the term: literally escaping the reach of 36
37 curatorial practice and its attendant disciplinary institutions (museums, university, 37
38 nation-state). In the psychoanalytical sense: by pointing to troubles and disorders 38
39 39
40 40
11  The juxtaposition of Deleuze’s symptomatology with the key Freudian concept of
41 ‘working-through’ is a symptom less of an impasse or impossibility than of hope: to find 41
42 help from two of the most powerful theoretical and practical attempts to handle and care for 42
43 the volatile materials of repetitions. It also goes without saying that the title of this chapter 43
44 is indebted to Deleuze’s own wrestling with the ontology of repetition (see Deleuze 1994). 44

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1 that cannot be treated and cared for in the bio-medical sense of the term. Incurable 1
2 images can only be the source of a lament at the threshold of a mourning process 2
3 hinged on a singular ontology of images and pedagogy of healing. Incurable 3
4 images are both clinical and non-clinical forms of life. I have evaluated here some 4
5 of the uses and disadvantages of these incurable images for life. The rest escapes 5
6 us indefinitely. 6
7 7
8 8
9 References 9
10 10
11 Apollon, Willy. 2006. ‘The Untreatable’. Translated by Steven Miller. Umbr(a): 11
12 The Journal of the Unconscious 1: 23–39. 12
13 Bartra, Roger. 1987. La jaula de la melancolia: identidad y metamorfosis del 13

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14 mexicano. Mexico City: Grijalbo. 14
15 Benslama, Fethi. 2009. Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam. Minneapolis, 15
16 MN: University of Minnesota Press. 16
17
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Biggs, Simon. 2013. ‘January on Empire: Research in Practice’. Post on the forum
of -empyre- soft_skinned_space Accessed 14 February 2013. http://empyre.
library.cornell.edu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=104.
Chiesa, Lorenzo. 2005. Psychoanalysis in the City. Accessed 17 February 2013.
http://psychoanalysis-urbantheory.janvaneyck.nl/.
17
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22 Cohen, Sandy. 2010. ‘Publication, Knowledge, Merit: On Some Politics of 22
23 Editing’. Cultural Critique 75: 114–47. 23
24 Crapanzano, Vincent. 2004. Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary- 24
25 philosophical Anthropology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 25
26 ——. 2011. The Harkis: The Wound that Never Heals. Chicago, IL: University of 26
27 Chicago Press. 27
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28 Davoine, Françoise and Jean Max Gaudillère. 2006. Histoire et trauma: la folie 28
29 des guerres. Paris: Editions Stock/L’Autre pensée. 29
30 Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New 30
31 York: Columbia University Press. 31
32 ——. 1995. ‘Post-scripts on Societies of Control’. In Negotiations: 1972–1990. 32
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33 Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press, 177–82. 33

34 ——. 1997. Essays Critical and Clinical. Minneapolis, MN: University of 34
35 Minnesota Press. 35
36 —— and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism Schizophrenia. 36
37 Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota 37
38 Press. 38
39 Didi-Huberman, George. 2002. L’image survivante: histoire de l’art et temps des 39
40 fantômes selon Warburg. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. 40
41 Enwezor, Okwi, ed. 2012. Intense Proximity: An Anthology of the Near and the 41
42 Far. Paris: Schoenhofs Foreign Books, ART LYS edition. 42
43 Foster, Hall. 1996. ‘The Artist as Ethnographer’. In The Return of the Real: The 43
44 Avant-garde At the End of the Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 44

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1 Groys, Boris. 2009. ‘Politics of Installation’. e-flux 2, January. Accessed 10 1

2 February 2013. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/politics-of-installation/. 2
3 Lee, Pam. 2012. Forgetting the Art World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 3
4 Malik, Kenan. 2010. ‘A Book in Progress: Sartre and the Anguish of Freedom’. 4
5 Pandaemonium: Writings, Readings, Thoughts & Scribbles. Accessed 14 5
6 February 2013. http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/a-book-in- 6
7 progress-part-14-sartre-and-the-anguish-of-freedom/. 7
8 Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. 8
9 Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 9
10 Montezemolo, Fiamma and Lucia Sanroman. 2005. ‘El hombre que invento su 10
11 (tercera) nacion’. Replicante: ideas para un pais en ruinas 1(3): 102–8. 11
12 Moreiras, Alberto. 2001. The Exhaustion of Difference: The Politics of Latin 12
13 American Cultural Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 13

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14 Pandolfo, Stefania. 1998. Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from a Moroccan Space 14
15 of Memory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 15
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——. 2013. ‘Ramz, ‘Ibra and the Dynamogram: The Dialectic of the Monster’. In
The Knot of the Soul. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Pheng, Cheah. 1999. ‘Spectral Nationality: The Living On [sur-vie] of the
Postcolonial Nation in Neocolonial Globalization’. Boundary 2(26.3):
225–52. Accessed 14 April 2013. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/boundary/
v026/26.3cheah.html.
16
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21
22 ——. 2003. Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial 22
23 Literatures of Liberation. New York: Columbia University Press. 23
24 Preziosi, Donald. 2003. Brain of the Earth’s Body: Art, Museums, and the 24
25 Phantasms of Modernity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 25
26 Rabinow, Paul. 2007. Marking Time: On the Anthropology of the Contemporary. 26
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27 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 27

28 Sanchez, Osvaldo. 2006. ‘Fading Traces/Senuelos’. In [Situational] Public In/ 28
29 Site0. Manitoba: Friesens Book Division, 40–50. 29
30 Serra, Santiago. 2005. ‘México es como una ciudad-tumor’. Interview by Carlos 30
31 Jiménez. El Pais, 5 February. Accessed 17 February 2013. http://elpais.com/ 31
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32 diario/2005/02/05/babelia/1107563956_850215.html. 32
33 33
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 1 Chapter 13 1
2 2
3 The Postcolonial ‘Exhibitionary Complex’: 3
4 4
5 The Role of the International Expo in 5
6 6
7 Migrating and Multicultural Societies 7
8 8
9 Stefania Zuliani 9
10 10
11 11
12 12
13 13

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14 Rightfully finding its place in the lively international debate that has involved 14
15 museums since the late 1980s and has given rise to a New Museology which puts 15
the museum and its functions at the centre of a very broad and critical reflection,
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Tony Bennett’s The Birth of the Museum (1995) has significantly contributed to
redefining the requirements and reasons for the affirmation of this institution. The
museum is no longer exclusively framed within the history of collecting and its
evolution – still very much the case in Italian museology – but is included in the
complex network of relations (both conceptual and of power) which have led to the
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22 development of modern exhibition devices. Rather than considering the gradual 22
23 rise of the museum institution as a cornerstone of modernity in an independent 23
24 and thus reductive manner, Bennett chose to define and discuss ‘the exhibitionary 24
25 complex’ in all its complexity. He points out that what he has called ‘Technologies 25
26 of Progress’ have found a space of representation and verification not only in the 26
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27 secluded rooms of the museum, but also in other public spaces equally involved in 27
28 the practice of ‘showing and telling’: 28
29 29
30 The fair and the exhibition are not, of course, the only candidates for consideration 30
31 in this respect …. Equally, the museum has undoubtedly been influenced by its 31
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32 relations to cultural institutions which, like the museum itself and like the early 32
33 international exhibitions, had a rational and improving orientation: libraries and 33
34 public parks, for example. … They are also institutions which, in being open 34
35 to all-comers, have shown a similar concern to devise ways of regulating the 35
36 conduct of their visitors, and to do so, ideally, in ways that are both unobtrusive 36
37 and self-perpetuating. (Bennett 1995, 6) 37
38 38
39 In contrast to what was proposed by Douglas Crimp in the dense pages of 39
40 his essay On the Museum’s Ruins (1993), where, using theoretical tools and 40
41 categories derived from Michel Foucault, and from Discipline and Punish in 41
42 particular, Bennett suggested reading the museum and institutions related to 42
43 it within a ‘carceral archipelago’: ‘There is another institution of confinement 43
44 awaiting such archaeological analysis – the museum – and another discipline – 44

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1 art history’ (Crimp 1993, 48). The author of The Birth of the Museum, although 1
2 keeping Foucault’s archaeology as a reference, opted to define the nature of the 2
3 museum and other exhibiting institutions in terms not of confinement, but of 3
4 exhibition and organisation of rules, noting in particular that the ‘significance 4
5 of the formation of the exhibitionary complex … was that of providing new 5
6 instruments for the moral and cultural regulation of the working classes’ (Bennett 6
7 1995, 73). 7
8 Whether permanent or temporary, according to Bennett the exhibition is in 8
9 fact always a visual system that involves a continuous self-monitoring on behalf 9
10 of the public, which in the context of the exhibition becomes itself an exhibition 10
11 according to a control strategy implicating, above all, a revolutionary vision 11
12 technology: 12
13 13

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14 The exhibitionary complex … perfected a self-monitoring system of looks in 14
15 which the subject and object positions can be exchanged, in which the crowd 15
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comes to commune with and regulates itself through interiorizing the ideal of
an ordered view of itself as seen from the controlling vision of power – a site of
sight accessible to all. (Bennett 1995, 69)

The visitor, as Thomas Struth emphasised in his Museum Photographs (1993),

is therefore both the subject and object of vision, he watches and is watched,
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22 he knows and recognises himself, enrolling in a movement that contributes 22
23 simultaneously to form a new public and a new vision system (see Struth 2008). 23
24 And this is exactly what happened, not without causing great astonishment, in 24
25 London during the Great Exhibition of 1851, a key event in the history of the 25
26 modern exhibitionary complex, a place for regulating the masses and creating an 26
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27 audience. In what is commonly considered the first World’s Fair, in preparation 27

28 for many years and having its roots ‘in Biblical bazaars, medieval markets, 28
29 anywhere that people congregate for barter and trade’ (Greengard 1986, 46), it 29
30 acknowledged the Paris Expositions Nationales as its immediate forerunner, a 30
31 model to imitate and surpass in size and globalising ambition (Colombo 2012, 31
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32 44).1 The Fair had the opportunity to exert its central position as a democratic 32
33 panopticon (Bennett 1995, 69) for exhibition and mass entertainment, and the 33
34 Crystal Palace was its symbol and modern monument. Thanks to the participation 34
35 of 12 nations and the presence of a section devoted to so-called primitive peoples, 35
36 the Great Exhibition of London, which Gottfried Semper described as ‘a sort of 36
37 Babel’, was able to reveal the contradictions of the present, not least because 37
38 of its seemingly confused nature (Semper 1989). It presented itself as a model 38
39 of universal representation that had a dual nature, operating at the same time 39
40 by expansion (the Fair as a living museum or encyclopaedia) and contraction 40
41 – the Fair as a sort of ‘global village’ (Greengard 1986, 49) – according to an 41
42 42
43 43
44 1  For an iconographic history of the Universal Expositions, see Mattie (1998). 44

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 The Postcolonial ‘Exhibitionary Complex’ 177

1 ambiguous scheme which has been perpetuated with remarkable persistence 1

2 ever since. 2
3 3
4 4
5 The Pilgrimage to the Commodity Fetish 5
6 6
7 The World’s Fair in fact continues to present itself as a vast panoply of objects 7
8 and people – and not surprisingly, it has even been called a ‘human zoo’ – 8
9 especially colonial Expos – which, now as then, widely adopts ephemeral, often 9
10 hypertrophic and even irrational architectural structures. It is also a concentrated 10
11 and claustrophobic microcosm which portrays, in an emphatic manner, cultures 11
12 and symbolic productions drawn from everywhere. On the one hand, these are 12
13 arranged in a declared and even ostentatious educational manner, and on the 13

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14 other, relentlessly reduced to the paradoxically reassuring paradigm of goods. 14
15 Expos seem indeed to have represented the epitome of nascent modernity, not 15
16 just its glitzy showcase. This is due not only to the sophisticated and appropriately 16
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provisional exhibits that displayed the triumphant story of technological progress
and benefits related to the emergence of a capitalistic model of development,
but also to the influence they have had in contributing to the education of an
ever-increasing public. What every World’s Fair still seems to show today, in an
age which is far removed from, and epistemologically irreducible to, the birth
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22 of the exhibitionary complex, is a marvellous educational (propaganda?) and 22
23 entertainment machine, a huge ‘edutainment’ space, to use the term that has 23
24 caught on in museum studies in recent years. The contents have undoubtedly 24
25 changed over the centuries without calling into question the celebratory vocation 25
26 of all World’s Fairs. 26
27 In the Fair, of course, the glorious stages and ever-successful results of the 27
oo

28 triumph of the machine and the achievements of Western civilisation are no longer 28
29 recorded. Nor is it possible to read it in terms of a potlatch, or ritual gift, that the often 29
30 astronomical costs and excellence which characterise each Expo might suggest.2 30
31 Yet, while passing from the late nineteenth-century exaltation of technology to the 31
32 ecological emphasis of the turn of the millennium (Expo 2000 in Hanover was 32
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33 dedicated to ‘sustainable development’, Expo 2005 in Aichi focused on ‘Nature’s 33

34 Wisdom’, and in 2010 in Shanghai, the theme was ‘Better City, Better Life’), 34
35 the spirit of the World’s Fair remains, at least in intent and official statements.3 35
36 It continues to provide a mirror of a civilisation which has not stopped believing 36
37 in the advancement of the arts and sciences and the consequences for quality of 37
38 life and social justice (‘Feed the Planet: Energy For Life’ is to be the theme of the 38
39 next World Expo in Milan in 2015). But is it really possible that an institution so 39
40 deeply entrenched in modern thought, fuelled by the universalistic ambitions of 40
41 41
42 2  Benedict (1983) compared international expositions to the ritual of the potlatch. 42
43 3  On this matter, see Official Site of the Bureau International des Expositions: http:// 43
44 www.bie-paris.org/site/ (accessed 10 November 2013). 44

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 178 The Postcolonial Museum

1 modernity as well as its happiness-seeking utopias, by what Menna (1968) called 1

2 Profezia di una società estetica (‘The Prophecy of an Aesthetic Society’), has 2
3 maintained its mission and value intact in a time that seems to be no longer even 3
4 postmodern?4 Is this, as Arnold Gehlen (1961) suggested, the temporality of post- 4
5 histoire, marked by a globalisation that has little to do with mondialisation and the 5
6 creation of worlds advocated by Jean-Luc Nancy? The answer was given, ahead 6
7 of his time as usual, by Walter Benjamin. 7
8 As long ago as the 1930s, Benjamin pointed out how the work of art had 8
9 changed in value in the age of mechanical reproduction, going from a cultural to 9
10 an essentially exhibitory state (Benjamin 2008). Making specific reference to the 10
11 Universal Exhibitions, he stressed that these were primarily ‘places of pilgrimage 11
12 to the commodity fetish’ (Benjamin 1999, 7). The notion of the commodity as 12
13 fetish – which Benjamin certainly owed to Marx – has now combined with the 13

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14 all-pervasive value of exhibition to take on a further, ominous meaning. For 14
15 the exhibition – which always involves shift and risk – is in itself an inexorable 15
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process of fetishisation, and Giorgio Agamben (2005) goes so far as to speak of
the museification of the world. As Walter Benjamin says:

The world exhibitions glorify the exchange value of the commodity. They
create a framework in which their use value recedes into the background. They
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21 open a phantasmagoria which a person enters in order to be distracted. The
22 entertainment industry makes this easier by elevating the person to the level of 22
23 the commodity. He surrenders to its manipulations while enjoying his alienation 23
24 from himself and others. (Benjamin 1999, 7–8) 24
25 25
26 This observation about the universal exhibitions proves to be an extraordinarily 26
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27 effective tool for understanding how the transition from the teleology of the 27
28 modern period to a post-histoire has not at all marred, as one would have expected, 28
29 the prestige of the modern exhibitionary complex. The triumph of fetishism and 29
30 the consequent establishment of a mechanism of alienation which, addressed ‘to 30
31 the living … defends the rights of the corpse’, has produced the ‘sex appeal of the 31
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32 inorganic’ (Benjamin 1999, 7–8). As argued acutely by Mario Perniola (2004), 32

33 this characterises the contemporary moment, resulting in the post-human aesthetic 33
34 horizon of the late twentieth century. Thus, not only is the crisis of the modern 34
35 and the emergence of an unstable and complex postmodern condition marked 35
36 by the ‘critical laxity’ identified by Lyotard; the processes of decolonisation, 36
37 postructuralist deconstructive logic and the concept of difference have contributed 37
38 the downfall of the museum. 38
39 Today, it is an institution that is more than ever vital and productive (Zuliani 39
40 2009). The Universal Exhibitions have never lost their impact and seductive 40
41 41
42 4  On the recent debate about the end of postmodern, see Struth (2011), with comments 42
43 by Omar Calabrese, Maurizio Ferraris, Carlo Formenti, Stefano Cristante and Fausto Curi. 43
44 The complexity of the postmodern era was highlighted in Trimarco (2006). 44

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 The Postcolonial ‘Exhibitionary Complex’ 179

1 power, because it is the exhibition itself – the exhibition value and its associated 1
2 fetishisation – which has stated unconditionally and with absolute pervasiveness its 2
3 dominance in the contemporary scene. Of course, political and economic situations 3
4 have changed. Long gone is the time when, for the great colonial powers, World’s 4
5 Fairs were occasions ‘to show a sense of their own superiority over the cultures of 5
6 their colonised dependents’ (Benedict 1991, 5) by staging exotic exhibits which 6
7 included objects and peoples – ‘From exotic products to exotic peoples was not a 7
8 large step’, noted Benedict (1991, 8) acutely. Today, it is rather corporations that 8
9 have a dominating role within the Universal Exhibitions: 9
10 10
11 The major innovations in design and symbol-making in post-World War II 11
12 exhibitions have come not from nations, new or old, but from multi-national 12
13 corporations. Their logos have become better known than many national 13

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14 symbols. … Corporations have employed amusement-area techniques such 14
15 as rides, mechanical monsters and theatrical entertainment. … International 15
16 exhibitions now seem to reflect a new form of dependency. (Benedict 1991, 8) 16
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Is the Universal Expo Really a ‘Genuine World Tour’?

From the paternalistic dominance of colonial empires to the spectacular one of

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22 transnational corporations: this is, without a doubt, a significant shift which, 22
23 far from contradicting, further underlines the continuing symbolic power and 23
24 the massive media and cost of the Expos (whose financial outcomes, it is worth 24
25 emphasising, are increasingly likely to be in the red, which makes the tough 25
26 competition involving the candidate cities to accommodate the 2020 edition 26
27 difficult to understand). 27
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28 This actually lends support to those who, like Patrick Young, have rather 28
29 forcedly wanted to see the Great Exhibitions of the nineteenth century as ‘the 29
30 point of germination for many defining practices of our current media-saturated 30
31 global order’ (Young 2008, 340). This hypothesis, the result of a retrospective 31
32 look which raises the question of the fake–authentic relationship connected to 32
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33 the exotic presence and performance in the ‘first’ World’s Fairs (in particular, 33
34 the reference is to the Palais de Colonie at the 1889 Expo), maybe applies too 34
35 carelessly paradigms from successive contexts and cultural conditions. It is no 35
36 coincidence, I think, that Young (2008) mistakenly sets the establishment of the 36
37 Musée de l’Homme too early, in 1878. What definitely remains to be discussed is 37
38 the meaning of a Universal Exhibition in contemporary society. 38
39 This is a multicultural and migrating society that needs to create a ‘terrestrial 39
40 citizenship’ (Edgar Morin), but which, unfortunately, is increasingly marked 40
41 by ethnic, religious and nationalistic conflicts and contradictions that perfectly 41
42 match the processes of cultural globalisation once again based on the fetishism 42
43 of commodities and the fetish of financial capital. Can the World’s Fair, with 43
44 its optimistic intentions and vaunted belief in progress, really transform the 44

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 180 The Postcolonial Museum

1 contradictions and perspectives of a post-industrial and global system which, in 1

2 order to respond to the crisis of productive systems, cannot avoid creating new 2
3 relations and new paradigms of economic and cultural development? The question 3
4 must initially be posed in terms of representation and critical distance. How is 4
5 the relationship between the World’s Fairs and the real world established today? 5
6 In migrating and multicultural societies, is it possible that the Expo can maintain 6
7 its role as a sensational diorama of the world, capable of providing the visitor 7
8 with the illusion that he/she can access every tradition and culture without much 8
9 effort? ‘In a few hours we have just completed a genuine world tour,’ we read in 9
10 the handbook for the 1937 Paris Expo (Berot-Berger 1937, 83), and as James D. 10
11 Herbert convincingly pointed out for this World’s Fair in particular, ‘rather than 11
12 antecedent to its representations, the real world emerges largely as their product’ 12
13 (Herbert 1995, 109). 13

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14 The World’s Fair arose, then, as a radically different territory, as a 14
15 ‘heterotopias’, to quote Foucault, a place whose functioning contradicts all 15
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other places. An autonomous system of signs, essentially self-referential, where 16
the common coordinates of space and time are lacking, produces a country with 17
no borders and recognisable history, in which one could at the same time feel 18
excluded from the real world and be the owner of the whole world. This is just, 19
according to Roland Barthes, what happens when one is at the top of the Eiffel 20
Tower, which was built, it is worth remembering, for the 1889 World’s Fair as 21
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21
22 the emblem of a prodigious modernity. More than a reflection, a representation 22
23 or a synthesis of the real world, the Universal Exhibition is then offered as 23
24 another world, just as real. It is a construction of meaning that, distanced 24
25 from everyday reality, could also provide a critical perspective on the latter, 25
26 maybe even highlighting issues and tensions still unexploded which, although 26
oo

27 disguised, become readable in the architecture of the national (nationalistic) 27

28 pavilions, exactly as occurred in 1937 in Paris. 28
29 During the Fair, the world looked at itself, just as the public acknowledged 29
30 itself in the promenades of the Expo. What remains today of that relationship, 30
31 the result of a difference, of a conscious distance? Looking at the proposals and 31
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32 effects of the 2010 Shanghai Expo, which in terms of sheer size and ambition 32
33 certainly represents an inescapable and controversial reference point, it seems 33
34 very little. 34
35 35
36 36
37 We are the World, We are the Fair 37
38 38
39 ‘The fair is not a fake copy of a “real” world, but as a simulation it marks the 39
40 breakdown of the distinction of the copy from the original, of the fair from the 40
41 world. The world/fair is everything and nothing, simultaneously nowhere and 41
42 now here’ (Nordin 2012). This is the unequivocal and disturbing conclusion 42
43 reached by Astrid H.M. Nordin, the author of a recent study on the Shanghai 43
44 Expo. A drastic statement, the result of a reflection which, using appropriate 44

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 The Postcolonial ‘Exhibitionary Complex’ 181

1 categories and theoretical tools borrowed from Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra 1

2 and Simulation (1994), emphasises the impossibility of identifying even a 2
3 minimal distance between the World’s Fair and the world, both hyper-real 3
4 outcomes of the contemporary condition. This is a condition in which any 4
5 form of abstraction can no longer exist, since every possible referentiality is 5
6 lost – ‘No more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept’ 6
7 (Baudrillard 1994) – and the infinite proliferation of simulacra has led to the 7
8 ‘divine irreference of images’. No distinction between reality and imagination, 8
9 or between true and false. 9
10 This is the image that China has given, first to itself – 95 per cent of the 73 10
11 million visitors of the Shanghai Expo were Chinese citizens (Padovani 2010) – 11
12 and then to the world through the national pavilions and those of corporations, 12
13 located in two different parts of a vast area which, two years after the event, 13

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14 looks like an eerie no man’s land, a ‘non-place’ (Augé) featuring mock-ruins 14
15 and building sites. These, in turn, promote other huge and equally ephemeral 15
16 cathedrals of consumption (currently under construction is the Chocolate 16
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Happy Land, which will use some of the Arab pavilions), and coincide perfectly
with the glowing phantasmagoria of the commodity, a fetish and universal
simulacrum, a show no longer ‘concentrated’ or ‘diffuse’, but as Guy Debord
wrote in his Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, ‘integrated’ (Debord
1990, 8).
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22 There is no longer a show of the world of the commodity dominating life, 22
23 simply because there is no world other than the very exhibition of goods. ‘An 23
24 uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference’ (Baudrillard 1994, 6) 24
25 in which the presence, of a dusty and even inappropriate legacy, the national 25
26 pavilions that were so deeply rooted in the tradition of the modern exhibitionary 26
27 complex, loses all ideological significance and causes no conflict or controversy. 27
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28 In Shanghai, everything, the real and/is fake, is on show and, after all, ‘in few 28
29 places is the question of the real and the imaginary, the true and the false, the 29
30 original and the fake as pertinent and as sensitive as in contemporary China’ 30
31 (Nordin 2012). 31
32 All in all, the important thing is not to escape the accusation of plagiarism 32
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33 (which, among other things, even involved the Expo anthem), but to carefully avoid 33
34 any infringement of the stereotype: the multi-ethnic and multicultural society is not 34
35 at all removed or denied, but the macro/micro cosmos of the World’s Fair simply 35
36 exhibits it in a horizontal sum of reassuring clichés: the Italian Pavilion, donated 36
37 to the Chinese People and renamed the Shanghai Italian Center, still welcomes the 37
38 coaches of orderly tourists with the music of ‘Funiculì Funiculà’ and the pop voice 38
39 of Pavarotti. What remains of the halls of North Africa still evokes an atmosphere 39
40 of souks, deserts and paper oases, while the impressive China Pavilion, today the 40
41 China Art Palace, a spectacular upside-down ziggurat colloquially known as the 41
42 Oriental Crown, which overlooks the glistening spaceship of the Mercedes Benz 42
43 Arena (which during the Expo was the Shanghai World Expo Cultural Center), is, 43
44 of course, lacquer red and CCP red. 44

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 182 The Postcolonial Museum

1 An ‘Educational Turn’ 1
2 2
3 In our ‘hyperreal world of simulacra’ it seems there is no way to break through the 3
4 surface: the crime has taken place, reality has been killed, and its shining, lifeless 4
5 remains do nothing but increase ‘the sex appeal of the inorganic’. The Exhibition 5
6 – the World’s Exhibition – cannot permit conflict, does not tolerate dissonance; 6
7 it is traditionally sedating. Must we therefore surrender to being witnesses of the 7
8 phantasmagoria of goods (whether produced by art or by science), to its exuberant 8
9 performance, which is also the show of commercial diplomacy and corporate 9
10 culture? 10
11 Certain recent signals from the art world suggest that if there is a possibility 11
12 of corroding an apparently perfect mechanism, this lies in regaining some 12
13 critical distance through experimenting with new educational practices. It is the 13

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14 ‘educational turn’ (O’Neill and Wilson 2010; Zuliani 2012) that, by overturning 14
15 the modern paradigm of education as a means of disciplining, of which the 15
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exhibitionary complex was the very site of elaboration and affirmation, reconsiders
education not as content delivery, but primarily as an experience of the other, as a
site of transit and encounter. And also as a necessary expression and processing of
conflict. This is the gap, in many ways uncomfortable and not without pitfalls, in
which artists and critics today, along with curators and museum educators, act to
counter the sterile purity and authoritarian neutrality of the exhibition. It is a job
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22 pursued in residual spaces. It dares to deal in anachronism and even obsolescence, 22
23 and without identity nostalgia or neo-tribalistic temptations, seeks to defend the 23
24 right to contradict and query. It is a critical exercise which seeks unique contexts, 24
25 small communities, that live through contagion and relationship, duration and 25
26 roots. 26
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27 It would be nice if the next World’s Fair in Milan, unfortunately already 27

28 suspected of promoting gentrification, did not simply celebrate in 2015 the over- 28
29 blown epic of ‘green’ corporations, but endorsed, starting from its planning and 29
30 building, a necessary relationship with the territory and citizens. This could 30
31 become the laboratory and document of an educational effort, a patient practice of 31
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32 translation, dialogue and research which would also, but not only, lead to a new 32
33 type of public art. 33
34 34
35 35
36 References 36
37 37
38 Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. Profanazioni. Rome: Nottetempo. 38
39 Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by S.F. Glaser. Ann 39
40 Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. 40
41 Benedict, Burton. 1983. ‘The Anthropology of World’s Fairs’. In The Anthropology 41
42 of World’s Fairs: San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 42
43 1915, edited by B. Benedict et al. Berkeley, CA and London: Lowie Museum 43
44 of Anthropology in association with Scholar Press. 44

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1 ——. 1991. ‘International exhibitions and national identity’. Anthropology Today 1

2 7(3): 5–9. 2
3 Benjamin, Walter. 1999. The Arcades Project, edited by Rolf Tiedemann. 3
4 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 4
5 ——. 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, edited 5
6 by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty and Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, 6
7 MA: Harvard University Press. 7
8 Bennett, Tony. 1995. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: 8
9 Routledge. 9
10 Berot-Berger, Marie-Louise. 1937. L’Atout-Maître de la vie: échos de l’Exposition 10
11 arts et techniques. Paris: Bibliothèques du Progrès. 11
12 Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century 12
13 Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 13

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14 Colombo, Paolo. 2012. Le Esposizioni Universali: i mestieri d’arte sulla scena del 14
15 mondo (1851–2010). Venice: Marsilio. 15
16 Crimp, Douglas. 1993. On the Museum’s Ruins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 16
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De Bary, Marie-Odile, André Desvallées and Françoise Wasserman, eds. 1994.
Vagues: une anthologie de la nouvelle muséologie, vol. 2. Mâcon and Savigny-
le-Temple: Éditions W and MNES.
Debord, Guy. 1990. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. Translated by
Malcolm Imrie. London: Verso.
17
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22 Foucault, Michel. 1986. ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’. Diacritics 22
23 16: 22–7. 23
24 Gehlen, Arnold. 1961. Über kulturelle Kristallisation. Bremen: Angelsachsen- 24
25 Verlag. 25
26 Greengard, Stephen Neil. 1986. ‘A Brief History of Progress’. Journal of 26
27 Decorative and Propaganda Arts 2: 46–59. 27
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28 Herbert, James D. 1995. ‘The View of the Trocadéro: The Real Subject of the 28
29 Exposition Internationale, Paris. 1937’. Assemblage 26: 94–112. 29
30 Mattie, Erik. 1998. World’s Fairs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press. 30
31 Menna, Filiberto. 1968. Profezia di una società estetica. Milan: Lerici. 31
32 Nordin, Astrid. 2012. ‘Taking Baudrillard to the Fair: Exhibiting China in the 32
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33 World at the Shanghai Expo’. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 37(2): 33

34 106–20. 34
35 O’Neill, Paul and Mick Wilson, eds. 2010. Curating and the Educational Turn. 35
36 London: Open Editions, and Amsterdam: De Appel. 36
37 Padovani, Florence. 2010. ‘Premières impressions sur l’Exposition universelle de 37
38 Shanghai. La Chine se met en scène’. EchoGéo, 22 November. Accessed 14 38
39 March 2013. http://echogeo.revues.org/12139. 39
40 Perniola, Mario. 2004. The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic. London: Continuum. 40
41 Semper, Gottfried. 1989. The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings. 41
42 Translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann. Cambridge: 42
43 Cambridge University Press. 43
44 Struth, Thomas. 1993. Museum Photographs. Munich: Schrimel/Mosel. 44

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1 ——. 2008. Thomas Struth, edited by Mario Codognato. Milan: Mondadori Electa. 1
2 ——. 2011. ‘Tramonto del postmoderno’. Alfabeta2 14: 8–12. 2
3 Trimarco, Angelo. 2006. Galassia: Avanguardia e postmodernità. Rome: Editori 3
4 Riuniti. 4
5 Vergo, Peter (ed.) 1989. The New Museology. London: Reaktion Books. 5
6 Young, Patrick. 2008. ‘From the Eiffel Tower to the Javanese Dancer: Envisioning 6
7 Cultural Globalization at the 1889 Paris Exhibition’. The History Teacher 41: 7
8 339–62. 8
9 Zuliani, Stefania. 2009. Effetto museo: arte critica educazione. Milan: Bruno 9
10 Mondadori. 10
11 ——. 2012. ‘Zona di contatto: prova di dialogo tra educazione e curatela’. In Le 11
12 aule dell’arte, edited by Nadia Barrella and Gaia Salvatori. Napoli: Luciano. 12
13 13

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 1 Chapter 14 1
2 2
3 Orientalism and the Politics of 3
4 4
5 Contemporary Art Exhibitions1 5
6 6
7 Alessandra Marino 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 In an interview on the conception of Orientalism (1978), Edward Said recalls 12
13 his early reflections on the unbridgeable divide between the experience of being 13

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14 an Arab and the artistic representations of Arabness.2 Eugène Delacroix or 14
15 Jean-Léon Gérôme’s paintings present some of the stereotypes Said decided to 15
investigate. Their images of sensuous women in the harem and of lazy Arab men
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smoking hashish inaugurated a stream of representation crystallising the East as
eternal and incapable of any development, as ‘the other’ of European progress.
Orientalism questions the creation of these imaginative geographies and defines
orientalism both as a field of knowledge attempting to map the East into a Western
understanding and as a political strategy of control sustaining imperialism.
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22 In the catalogue of the exhibition The Lure of the East: British Orientalist 22
23 Painting, the then directors of Tate Britain and the Yale Centre for British Art, 23
24 Stephen Deuchar and Amy Mayers, affirm that one of the stimuli for organising 24
25 the event was Said’s apparent disregard for the visual image, since his specific 25
26 interest lay in textuality (Deuchar and Meyers 2008, 6). On the contrary, I maintain 26
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27 that for Said, images were as important as texts, and a novel reading of orientalism 27
28 can be fruitful to discuss the political implications of contemporary artistic trends. 28
29 ‘Orientalist art’ commonly refers to the specific production of images of the 29
30 Middle East in the nineteenth century; but orientalism is a more pervasive strategy 30
31 of subjugation and subject-creation that remained active beyond the imperial 31
period. Its logic determines the reiteration of a cultural dichotomy between East
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32 32
33 and West, promoting the inferiorisation of the Orient. Filtering obliquely through 33
34 different artistic fields, it can surface in their modes of display. In this chapter, I 34
35 will explore three recent art exhibitions, held in Germany, Britain and Italy in 2011 35
36 and 2012, to follow possible traces of orientalism emerging in their conception 36
37 and organisation. 37
38 38
39 39
1  The research leading to these results has received funding from the European
40 40
Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–
41 2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 249379. 41
42 2  The video interview in which Said traces the history of the conception of Orientalism 42
43 is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwCOSkXR_Cw (accessed 27 April 43
44 2012). 44

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 186 The Postcolonial Museum

1 The first exhibition is Orientalism in Europe: From Delacroix to Kandinsky 1

2 (Munich 2011), proposing a journey through the historical formation of orientalist 2
3 aesthetics since the nineteenth century. Migrations: Journey into British 3
4 Contemporary Art, at Tate Britain in London from January 2012, is the second 4
5 one. It displayed a heterogeneous range of productions from immigrants who lived 5
6 in the UK across four centuries. Orientalism here surfaces as a means to construct 6
7 Britishness through rearticulating images of migrant others. In the third and final 7
8 case, I turn to Open 14 (Venice 2011) to zoom in on the Bangladeshi artist Ronni 8
9 Ahmmed’s installation The Tomb of Qara Köz (2011), curated by and staged in 9
10 collaboration with Ebadur Rahman, which challenges the orientalist binary of East 10
11 and West and displaces the link between identity and belonging. 11
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In 2011, the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich hosted Orientalism
in Europe: From Delacroix to Kandinsky (January–May 2011), one of the largest
recent exhibitions on orientalist art. The show, later transferred to Marseille
(May–August 2011), was only one of the events focusing on ‘the East’ that were
scheduled across Europe in 2011. The Musée d’Orsay in Paris at the same time
dedicated an entire exhibition to the contested orientalist painter Jean-Léon
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22 Gérôme, whose colossal canvases also occupied a relevant place in Munich. The 22
23 recent proliferation of events about ‘orientalist’ art reveals a renewed interest 23
24 in the relation between East and West and in their historical construction. The 24
25 development of this wave was encouraged by the Tate’s exhibition The Lure of 25
26 the East: British Orientalist Painting (2008), following on over twenty years later 26
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27 from the famous Washington exhibition Orientalism in Art (1984). 27

28 The exhibition in Munich proposed a journey through orientalist art and its 28
29 sublimation of the East. Images like Gérôme’s For Sale: Slaves at Cairo (c. 1871), 29
30 where the exposition of a woman’s nakedness places agency in the capturing eye, 30
31 expose the quest of the Western gaze trying to unveil Eastern beauty. Alternating 31
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32 domestic spaces, views of deserts and exotic architectural cityscapes, orientalist art 32
33 displays a solid realism and a meticulous attention to detail. However, the painters 33
34 who acted as ambassadors of Western rationality were also directly involved in 34
35 the proximity and difference of Arab culture. The artists’ personal experience of 35
36 migrancy sustained the legitimacy of their role as witnesses of a radically different 36
37 culture. 37
38 Fatema Mernissi (2008) defends this standpoint when she focuses on the British 38
39 painters’ experimental representations of night scenes and dreamy landscapes.3 She 39
40 refers to John Frederick Lewis’s prolonged stay in Cairo to highlight the liminality 40
41 41
42 3  She refers to the concept of ‘Samar’ to underline how the experience of darkness 42
43 and mystery gave rise to a source of creativity that was indebted with the Arab culture. The 43
44 artists’ suppressed dreamy side was nurtured by the conquered. 44

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 Orientalism and the Politics of Contemporary Art Exhibitions 187

1 of painters as subjects living on the borders between cultures. Their attempts to 1

2 penetrate Eastern cultures, for Mernissi, cannot be grasped if one looks at their 2
3 work through the lens of Said’s idea of orientalism, which creates an unbridgeable 3
4 divide between East and West (Mernissi 2008, 34). 4
5 Mernissi’s point of view is fascinating. Her attention to the condition of 5
6 migrancy zooms in on individual agents of imperialism to stress how colonisation 6
7 is far from being a coherent project. On the other hand, this accent on personal 7
8 experience cannot conceal the effect of Lewis and Gérôme’s art in promoting the 8
9 superiority of the West. The political implications of their celebratory works are 9
10 the main objects of my interest. Rana Kabbani’s ‘Regarding Orientalist Painting 10
11 Today’ (2008) is fundamental to grasp how British representations of the Middle 11
12 East enabled an orientalist understanding of the region. She states: 12
13 13

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14 Delicately, if disingenuously, nineteenth century British Orientalist painting 14
15 papered over its connection to the rough designs of the Empire. It depicted a 15
16 world unnaturally emptied of politics, airily overlooking the highly charged 16
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events of the period – strikes, riots, rebellions, repressions and blockades; the
impoverishment and famine; the communal hangings and massacres – that were
the marks of Britain’s colonial ‘moment’ in the Middle East. (Kabbani 2008, 40)

The representation of static worlds and landscapes not only fixed oriental subjects
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22 in a timeless frame, creating rigid stereotypes, but also deprived them of any 22
23 political agency. The paintings avoided representing contexts of war and struggle; 23
24 they became catalogues of the splendour and the properties of the empire. The 24
25 apolitical dimension of the Orient emerges together with its ‘lure’: ‘orientalism is 25
26 nothing if not seductive’ (Kabbani 2008, 40). 26
27 Since the acknowledgement of oriental fascination is inseparable from the drive 27
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28 to conquer and dominate, the exhibition of these works triggers a reflection on 28

29 their significance in contemporary British culture. Looking at specific examples, 29
30 I ask whether and how orientalism, as a strategy of creating and fixing otherness, 30
31 surfaces in recent displays of orientalist art and art from the East. 31
32 Orientalism in Europe promises to unveil images of the Middle East, North Africa 32
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33 and the Islamic Orient displaying ‘magnificent’ works by European artists from the 33
34 nineteenth century onwards, including Eugène Delacroix and Auguste Renoir. It 34
35 traces the origins of orientalism in the French campaigns in Egypt and the resulting 35
36 Egyptomania, but it also follows ‘orientalist’ motives in modern works by Vasily 36
37 Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Timeless stereotypes of oriental subjects clearly emerge 37
38 through the tropes of lascivious women (Benjamin Constant’s Odalisque), ecstatic 38
39 men or aggressive Muslim soldiers. On the other hand, their creation is not addressed 39
40 as a form of power that supported imperial actions. The meticulous comments 40
41 accompanying the paintings make no mention of Said’s works of 1978 and 1997, 41
42 nor of the critical discourses seeing Islam and Orient as categories manufactured via 42
43 Western representations. The political classifications in play remain unquestioned, 43
44 and the borders of Europe and France are natural as well as fixed. 44

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 188 The Postcolonial Museum

1 One of the rooms dedicated to ‘scientific orientalism’ connected the birth of 1

2 anthropology to the need for representing veritable features of African subjects. 2
3 But the museum space, filled with statues representing Moroccan or Somali 3
4 people, did not make room for highlighting or troubling the role of the scientific 4
5 classifications of human species that were supporting Italian and French colonial 5
6 enterprises. Although the exhibition provoked critical comments on the political 6
7 correctness of showing these works, these responses were neutralised by recalling 7
8 the historical and aesthetic importance of the paintings. The fame of Delacroix’s 8
9 The Death of Sardanapal or Gérôme’s and Klee’s oriental spaces determined the 9
10 popularity of the art exhibition. But what understanding of orientalism did this 10
11 event support? Although the growing awareness of colonial histories raises general 11
12 interest, this does not necessarily translate into new reflections on the impact of 12
13 imperialism and orientalism on common perceptions of Orient and Occident. 13

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14 In Munich, the seduction of art was under the spotlight, but its political effects 14
15 were not. The quasi-objective descriptions of the artworks re-directed any possible 15
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political criticism towards an appreciation of the techniques of European artists.
The spell of the beauty of orientalist art managed to efface the orientalist logic of
imperial culture. With the emergence of a new political interest in North Africa
and the Middle East in 2011, mainly due to the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, the
show declared orientalism to be a two hundred-year-old Western drive to map
and represent the Orient. However, the existence of an oriental essence, to be
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22 sublimated through art, remained unquestioned. 22
23 23
24 24
25 Travelling Art, Migrating Bodies 25
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27 As Mernissi underlines, orientalist artists were migrants whose liminal subjectivity 27

28 surfaced in their own artworks representing non-Western societies. If the show in 28
29 Munich displayed these zones of cultural encounters, its complementary double 29
30 was represented by Tate Britain’s Migrations: Journeys into British Art. Instead of 30
31 dealing with Western trips to oriental sites and their exotic depictions, this show 31
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32 presented the reversed gaze of migrants on the British nation. 32

33 Taking its starting point in the sixteenth century, Migrations viewed British art 33
34 and identity as the product of a continuous dialogue with Europe, the Americas and 34
35 the ex-colonies. From Marcus Gheeraerts, Dutch painter at the court of Elizabeth 35
36 I, to contemporary artists from former imperial territories, the show ambitiously 36
37 proposed to reveal how migration has shaped British art until the present. In the 37
38 preface to the exhibition catalogue, the director of the Tate, Penelope Curtis, 38
39 discusses the significance of the title Migrations, referring to its elasticity. 39
40 ‘Migrations’ may refer to travels taking place across space and time, as well as 40
41 forms and genres. This indicates the transmutation of aesthetics, the plurality of 41
42 contexts of production and artistic fruition. 42
43 Its path through contemporary video art includes Handsworth Songs by Black 43
44 Audio Film Collective (1987), Mona Hatoum’s Measures of Distance (1988) 44

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 Orientalism and the Politics of Contemporary Art Exhibitions 189

1 and Zineb Sedira’s Floating Coffins (2009). Handsworth Songs (1986), on the 1
2 Birmingham riots, dislodges orientalist and racist stereotypes of migrants as 2
3 apolitical or criminals, giving them a platform to speak as British citizens. Its 3
4 aesthetic innovation of the language of documentaries constitutes a social and 4
5 political intervention. Combining personal accounts, news reports and other 5
6 footage, the narration counteracts prejudicial and mainstream media representations 6
7 of other cultures and identities. 7
8 In Hatoum’s video, the overlapping of Arabic writing, photos and English 8
9 commentary provokes a similar destabilising effect. Dealing with the exile and 9
10 relocation of Palestinians in Lebanon and Britain, Measures of Distance questions 10
11 the very possibility of a unitary national identity. None the less, even though single 11
12 artworks provide ground for calling into question particular histories and global 12
13 powers, their display in a single exhibition and under a unifying theme diminishes 13

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14 their impact. 14
15 The organisation of the collection in rooms condensing the essence of entire 15
16 centuries and following one another in chronological order makes all the works 16
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merge into the overarching theme, betraying their enormous differences. The
various genres, times and places displayed stretch the word ‘migration’ in its
plural connotations, with the effect of raising doubts on the very purpose of the
exhibition. The gathering in a single space of very diverse works organised in
chronological order produces a homogenising effect: it neutralises the disruptive
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22 messages of some works in favour of portraying a linear development of artistic 22
23 trends. The juxtaposition of Flemish or Italian painters migrating to Britain for art 23
24 training, such as Marcus Gheeraerts, with Indian and Caribbean artists, including 24
25 Avinash Chandra and Sonia Boyce, obliterates the colonialist background and 25
26 favours a multiculturalist genealogy of Britain. 26
27 The equation of different migratory routes and contexts crafts an image of 27
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28 Britain as a warm and welcoming ‘hub’ for artists since the sixteenth century. This 28
29 background preludes the transformation of the country into an adoptive mother for 29
30 the former colonial subjects. A blurb commenting on the works of the twentieth 30
31 century points to the freedom gained by those who moved to Britain and came in 31
32 contact with the international language of modernism. While sounding a positive 32
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33 note on migration as cross-cultural exchange, this statement is orientalist and 33

34 unidirectional: marginal cultures have to be directed towards the centre to access 34
35 European knowledge. 35
36 In this show, orientalism works in three ways. First, the decontextualised 36
37 display of migrants’ artworks, simply inserted in a chronological timeline running 37
38 parallel with British history, has the effect of anaesthetising their political potential. 38
39 Second, the variety of positions the artists assume as political subjects is reduced 39
40 to their condition of migrants. Third, the exhibition posits the host country as a 40
41 pole of attraction and a warm hub for international artists. Continuing briefly with 41
42 the second point, it is clear how the removal of the contexts of war and political 42
43 turmoil in orientalist paintings supported the diffusion of images of oriental 43
44 subjects as apolitical. Similarly, in the Tate exhibition, the erasure of specific 44

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 190 The Postcolonial Museum

1 contexts of travel and migration minimises the political impact of the works in 1
2 their contexts of production. This juxtaposition ends up creating an archetype of 2
3 the migrant as a bearer of a distinctive form of subjectivity. 3
4 Sudeep Das Gupta warns against the theoretical codification of a migrant 4
5 aesthetics that generically accounts for any migrant position. Voices and stories 5
6 told by the subjects themselves risk being silenced by the very framework in 6
7 which they find a space. Das Gupta writes: 7
8 8
9 Can one talk about a migratory aesthetics in the ontological sense of its political 9
10 value, even if one recognises its variegated styles? I don’t think so. Rather one 10
11 might ask how a close reading of an intensely personal story, told in first person, 11
12 migrates through multiple voices and across multiple spaces – and what that 12
13 reveals about the ways in which we situate the migrant, enclose him within our 13

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14 own theoretical protocols and make him the subject of aesthetic reflection. (Das 14
15 Gupta 2008, 200) 15
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Ironically, creating a continuous narrative flow on subjects and ideas migrating to
Britain, the exhibition itself does not absorb the lessons proposed by the very works
it contains. For John Akomfrah, the fragmentary aesthetics of Handsworth Songs
shows the fictitiousness of homogenous cultural and national identities, which are
open archives to be reconfigured by marginal narratives.4 Instead, showing that
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22 there have always been migrants, some of whom have positively contributed to the 22
23 growth of the country, the exhibition simplistically integrates migrants within the 23
24 master narrative of the nation. 24
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27 Art De-orientalising Culture? 27

28 28
29 Arguably, the problem with the exhibition Migrations is the framing of different 29
30 works in a collection that presents itself as coherent and cohesive. The unity 30
31 imposed by a restrictive chronological logic linking the rooms exposes the 31
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32 structural limit of the museum, whose space cannot convey the heterogeneity of 32
33 the artworks. 33
34 This classic model of the museum space, however, is not the only existing one. 34
35 Various art exhibitions and travelling fairs, such as Manifesta, have developed 35
36 new conceptual frames and reinvented modes of display. A less prominent, but 36
37 interesting, example is the Venetian exhibition Open, which reached its fourteenth 37
38 edition in 2011. It invites artworks to be displayed in the streets of the Venetian 38
39 island of Lido. The lack of a central structure suggests a resistance against any 39
40 40
41 4  Akomfrah affirms: ‘The archival goes to the very heart of how identities are 41
42 constructed and how they circulate in any culture because diasporic identities, in the 42
43 absence of monuments that attest their existence, have repositories of what they mean in 43
44 the very thing that’s supposed to deny their existence’ (Akomfrah 2012, 106). 44

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 Orientalism and the Politics of Contemporary Art Exhibitions 191

1 rigid logic of art display, so that the audience walking outdoors can stumble 1
2 into installations that blend within the fluid texture of the maritime city. Open 2
3 is structurally and thematically dedicated to mobility. In the same period of the 3
4 Biennale, where the disposition of artworks follows a national rationale, Open 4
5 proposes to look at the lagoon as a metaphor for travels and cultural innovations. 5
6 Against the crystallisation and labelling of art in relation to the nation, The 6
7 Tomb of Qara Köz, featured in Open 14, proposes a dialogue between fluctuating 7
8 historical memories and ambiguous cultural constructions (see the cover of this 8
9 book). The tomb is dedicated to the Mughal princess Qara Köz, central character 9
10 in Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence (2008), where she appears as 10
11 a courtesan at the Medici court. The installation consists of a pyramidal structure 11
12 made of Plexiglas, each level of which is filled with plastic cups containing painted 12
13 eggs. The eggs are decorated with various representations of the princess’s life in 13

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14 films and literature. The transparent materials used (plastic and Plexiglas) do not 14
15 block the view, and promote the integration of the work within the Lido. The eggs, 15
16 carrying fragmented stories, seem to float in a chaotic order, and reflect the fluidity 16
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of Venice and its history of East–West encounters.
The presence of the Mughal princess Qara Köz at the Medici court constitutes
a story of hybridity at the core of the Italian Renaissance. Against the discourse
identifying the early modern codification of Italian language and revival of Roman
history with the birth of a national identity (an argument instrumentally reactivated
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22 by fascism in the twentieth century), the memory of Qara Köz reveals an ancient 22
23 cultural and economic bond with the Orient. 23
24 The Tomb of Qara Köz stresses the importance of revising hybrid histories 24
25 to counteract the current reinforcement of local identity claims, as in the case 25
26 of the anti-immigration party the Northern League. Paying homage to the work 26
27 Fairytale presented by Ai Weiwei in Documenta 12, when 1,001 Chinese people 27
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28 were brought to Kassel to become the audience for the exhibition, Ahmmed and 28
29 Rahman invited Bengali immigrants to Venice to record memories of their journey 29
30 of migration. The aim was to reconfigure the city as a space of overlapping voices 30
31 of migrants and texts, including Robert Coover’s Pinocchio in Venice, Thomas 31
32 Mann’s Death in Venice and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. 32
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33 In Calvino’s book, images of Venice filter through all the represented cities. In 33
34 the main palace of Fedora, for example, every room contains a glass sphere with 34
35 a miniature of the town in an ideal form. The citizens of Fedora can choose their 35
36 favourite miniatures and imagine living in their dream-town: on the shores of 36
37 a canal that does not exist any more or in the streets reserved to those elephants 37
38 banned from the ‘real’ Fedora. The structure of Qara Köz’s tomb is reminiscent of 38
39 Calvino’s description of this palace. In the installation, each painted egg carrying the 39
40 fragment of a story is an instrument for imagining a new relation with Venice and its 40
41 representations. Interestingly, Calvino highlights that the palace with the small-scale 41
42 reproductions of Fedora is a museum. Seen in this light, Ahmmed’s installation also 42
43 deals with new possibilities of art display. It envisages an image of the contemporary 43
44 museum as an archive to be constantly reactivated in relation to the audience. 44

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 192 The Postcolonial Museum

1 The night before the exhibition was officially opened, people stole some of 1
2 the eggs and broke them against the floor and the adjacent walls. Every time the 2
3 installation was restored, it was damaged again.5 Some persons asked if they could 3
4 keep one egg, activating a wide range of intimate and personal reactions with the 4
5 installation. The public interacting dynamically with the artwork counteracted the 5
6 fixity of the traditional concept of art fruition in the museum space. The reference 6
7 to Fedora re-signifies the museum as an open archive. It challenges a view of the 7
8 museum as a collection of works ordered by a sovereign rationality. Rather than 8
9 burying or consecrating national histories, the envisaged museum, postcolonial 9
10 and intercultural, could provide tools to reflect upon society and cultural change in 10
11 a less structured and more interactive way. 11
12 With its stress on simultaneous temporalities and trans-border encounters, 12
13 Qara Köz questions the power play initiated by capturing the subject in predefined 13

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14 frames, but it also promotes a process of de-orientalisation of the fictionality of 14
15 dominant narratives defining East and West as monolithic blocks. The complex 15
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overlapping of narrations, autobiographies and images opposes the unilateral
power of colonial domination and nationalism. A wider range of encounters
highlights unexpected circumstances of travel and the creation of new aesthetics.
In Open, Ahmmed’s installation allows continuity between spaces and times that
are too often compartmentalised in museum rooms and exhibitions. The city of
Venice is revitalised by imagined and witnessed stories of migration, resisting
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22 fixed subject positions and inherited aesthetic forms. 22
23 23
24 24
25 Conclusion 25
26 26
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27 This chapter has analysed three recent art exhibitions, Orientalism in Europe: 27
28 From Delacroix to Kandinsky (Munich, 2011), Migrations: Journey into British 28
29 Contemporary Art (London, 2012) and Open 14 (Venice, 2011), to trace a relation 29
30 between the recent rise of interest in migrant art and the renewed attention to 30
31 orientalist art in Europe. It indicated that emphasising the liminal subjectivity 31
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32 of orientalist and migrant artists could lead to romanticising the condition of 32

33 migrancy and to effacing the colonial or imperial context of production of the 33
34 artworks. Moreover, the extensive catalogues of orientalist paintings on display 34
35 in Munich and the British migratory art exhibited in London expose the limits 35
36 inherent in more classical forms of museum exhibitions: the homogenising force 36
37 classifying artists and their work in relation to their belonging appears orientalist. 37
38 On the other hand, the third exhibition presents a different trajectory. The 38
39 dispersed site of Open in Venice suggested an alternative to the linearity of 39
40 the museum exhibition. In that context, a close look at Ahmmed’s The Tomb 40
41 41
42 5  A tomb made of eggs strikes us as an apparent contradiction; built of living material, 42
43 it points out the continuity between life and death, deconstruction and recreation, fixity and 43
44 movement. 44

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 Orientalism and the Politics of Contemporary Art Exhibitions 193

1 of Qara Köz pointed out the possibilities of exhibiting art after orientalism. In 1
2 the fluctuating space of the lagoon, this mausoleum incorporated fictional and 2
3 historical narratives to perform overlapping identities and the deconstruction of 3
4 binary oppositions of East and West. 4
5 5
6 6
7 References 7
8 8
9 Akomfrah, John. 2012. ‘Interview with the Artist’. In Migrations: Journeys into 9
10 British Art, London: Tate Publishing, 106–9. 10
11 Calvino, Italo. 1974. Invisible Cities. London: Secker and Warburg. 11
12 Carey-Thomas, Lizzie, ed. 2012. Migrations: Journeys into British Art. London: 12
13 Tate Publishing. 13

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14 Curtis, Penelope. 2012. ‘Foreword’. In Migrations: Journeys into British Art, 14
15 edited by L. Carey-Thomas. London: Tate Publishing, 8–9. 15
16 Das Gupta, Sudeep. 2008. ‘Running A(g)round: Migratory Aesthetics and the 16
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Politics of Translation’. In Essays in Migratory Aesthetics: Cultural Practices
Between Migration and Art-making, edited by Sam Durrant and Catherine M.
Lord. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 191–204.
Deuchar, Stephen, and Amy Meyers. 2008. ‘Foreword’. In The Lure of the East:
British Orientalist Painting, edited by N. Tromans. London: Tate Publishing,
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22 6–7. 22
23 Kabbani, Rana. 2008. ‘Regarding Orientalist Painting Today’. In The Lure of 23
24 the East: British Orientalist Painting, edited by N. Tromans. London: Tate 24
25 Publishing, 40–45. 25
26 Mernissi, Fatema. 2008. ‘Seduced by “Samar”, or: How British Orientalist 26
27 Painters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Darkness’. In The Lure of 27
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28 the East: British Orientalist Painting, edited by N. Tromans. London: Tate 28

29 Publishing, 33–9. 29
30 Rushdie, Salman. 2008. The Enchantress of Florence. London: Random House 30
31 Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge. 31
32 ——. 1997. Covering Islam. How the Media and the Experts Determine How We 32
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33 See the Rest of the World. London: Vintage. 33

34 Tromans, Nicholas, ed. 2008. The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting. 34
35 London: Tate Publishing. 35
36 36
37 37
38 38
39 39
40 40
41 41
42 42
43 43
44 44

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 1 Chapter 15 1
2 2
3 What Museum for Africa? 3
4 4
5 Itala Vivan 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
10 The question above raises interconnected cultural and political issues begging to 10
11 be answered, both in Europe and Africa. A vision opens up of a future embracing 11
12 the past yet steeped in the present. Such a question finds a keen listener in 12
13 the postcolonial ear, quick to perceive the jarring frictions resonating in our 13

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14 contemporary world. At this point in history, the former temples of European 14
15 empires – museums invented by imperial hegemonies – have gradually lost their 15
original mission as absolute indicators of a universalising canon. They are often
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unable to metamorphose into the convincing alternatives required by an era of
major changes. This is particularly true when Africa is involved. Yet, throughout
the processes of change and its representations, a need persists for places and sites
where human cultural artefacts can be collected, discussed and offered to a mixed
and diverse public sharing a common concern for knowledge. This addresses a
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22 widely perceived aspiration towards creating a dialogue via objects. Hence the 22
23 urge to renew existing museums through a process of re-creation, as well as to 23
24 invent entirely new museums featuring places and spaces suited to and expressive 24
25 of our present, weaves a dialogue with interlocutors no longer as passive targets 25
26 of the museum discourse, but as free and active subjects of their own cultural role. 26
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27 27
28 28
29 A Vexed Issue for both Europe and Africa 29
30 30
31 This chapter asks what a museum designed to accommodate, preserve and exhibit 31
African artefacts could be. How should such a museum be designed and organised
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32 32
33 if it is located in Africa, and thus addresses the very producers of the cultures 33
34 it represents, or subsequent generations? And what if the museum devoted to 34
35 Africa is in Europe, with European citizens as its primary constituency? The two 35
36 horns of the dilemma spark from a single issue – breaking colonial stereotypes 36
37 and creating new spaces for dialogue, insight and interaction. Our theme splits 37
38 into two directions, variants of a common postcolonial discourse told as either 38
39 heterodiegetic or homodiegetic narratives. 39
40 The theme expands further, because there are many existing museums in 40
41 Africa, and even more in Europe, created to collect and display artefacts of African 41
42 origin. How do these museums fare when submitted to postcolonial critique? 42
43 For the purposes of this analysis, it is useful to select a few museums and ask 43
44 whether and why they appear qualified and/or suitable to satisfy the needs of 44

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 196 The Postcolonial Museum

1 postcolonial societies and waves of global diaspora. Existing museums belong 1

2 to different categories and historical periods, and are therefore rooted in vastly 2
3 different political and cultural concepts – art museums, museums of ethnography, 3
4 archaeology, science; museums created in colonial times, like the Tervuren, or 4
5 after the end of colonisation, like the Branly or the Sainsbury Room. And what 5
6 about African museums in Africa, like the Fondation Zinsou at Cotonou, the Musée 6
7 National du Mali in Bamako or the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg? What 7
8 obstacles should be avoided? What precedents rejected? What lessons should we 8
9 learn from experience? What theoretical basis should provide the foundation for 9
10 an ideal museum worthy of being called postcolonial? 10
11 11
12 12
13 From Colonial Museum to New Museum 13

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15 The museum was born within European cultures: it first followed the drive of 15
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the European Renaissance, and then the impetus of revolutions generated by the
Enlightenment. With the boom of empires, it was transformed into an effective
storeroom for the (self-proclaimed) universal civilising mission that supported
colonialism ideologically. Rivers of ink have gone into describing the sources of
such an institution throughout history (Bennett 1995; Hooper-Greenhill 1992).
The museum has constantly changed: from the Galleria Celeste of the Gonzaga
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22 in Mantua – created to collect artworks according to the court’s taste – to the 22
23 giant collections of the Vatican Museums and the Musée du Louvre; from the 23
24 Wunderkammer of exotic curiosities to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century 24
25 imperial expositions in London, Vienna and Paris. This flux shows an unceasing 25
26 inner dynamism, with the museum as witness and example of its own time, even 26
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27 when it aims at enacting the past and celebrating memory, or when it undertakes 27
28 the task of setting a perennial, universalising canon. 28
29 In our problematic and turbulent third millennium, vertiginous rhythms in 29
30 technological innovation and unremitting accelerations in communication have 30
31 speeded up the world, a world demanding to be perceived, narrated and represented 31
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32 in a fluid space, open towards the future. Museums face new challenges along with 32
33 new epistemological perspectives, as witnessed by a growing inventiveness in the 33
34 creation of museums (Marstine 2006). To answer our question, it is necessary to 34
35 plunge into the zeitgeist and adopt it – that is, to enable the museum to express 35
36 its own time according to a principle of necessary subjectivity (Appadurai 1996). 36
37 With regard to African cultures and their representations, the museum must 37
38 become truly postcolonial, not only chronologically, but constitutionally. 38
39 39
40 40
41 From Europe’s Imperial Exposition to the Museum 41
42 42
43 The prototype of colonial exhibitions was the great exposition of imperial times, 43
44 still apparent in the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale at Tervuren. Established 44

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 What Museum for Africa? 197

1 in 1897–98 by King Leopold III of Belgium, the Tervuren, with its great variety 1
2 of exhibits, remains a typical example of collections and displays structured as 2
3 an encyclopaedia of empire. This is still true in spite of its fairly recent renewal. 3
4 The poet Stephen Gray recently visited it. His postcolonial gaze reveals the 4
5 accumulation of materials classified and enclosed in glass cases, 5
6 6
7 carvings (fetishes, masks, 7
8 with nails implanted or without, teeth, chips 8
9 of mirrors and beadwork, 9
10 incredibly naked and polished and later clothed) 10
11 11
12 prevented from telling their story and weaving the larger history of the ravages of 12
13 colonialism to explain their relationship to Europe. He concludes bitterly: 13

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15 Here no chains, chopped hands, 15
16 no shrunken heads on poles, nor the bullets that killed 16
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the fat black rubber tyres bite and squelch
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22 take our ease and 22
23 sit upon, the progress of this great atrocity. (Gray 2009) 23
24 24
25 The Tervuren is a classic example of the systematic othering of the colonised 25
26 world. Animal, vegetable and mineral exhibits are placed on the same level as 26
27 scientific and ethnographic curiosities and various artefacts, all serving to illustrate 27
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28 the conqueror’s power. Amputated from history, they are there to create wonder 28
29 (Greenblatt 1991; Lionnet 2004), but also a vague repulsion mixed with a shiver 29
30 of fear. 30
31 Strangely enough, the very recent Musée du quai Branly in Paris (2006) gives 31
32 the visitor a similar impression. Hordes of beautiful artefacts assembled from 32
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33 former Paris public collections are displayed as a kind of non-European art that 33
34 Jacques Chirac would have liked to (but dared not) define as primitive. Instead, 34
35 they call it art premier, the same unfortunate adjective used for the Pavillon des 35
36 Sessions (opened in 2000) at the Louvre (Amselle 2005; de L’Estoile 2007). The 36
37 long controversy around the Branly bears witness to its extremely difficult birth, 37
38 due to the resolute will of President Chirac along with the inspiration and active 38
39 co-operation of the collector-merchant Kerchache. The result is a stylish building 39
40 designed by Jean Nouvel, plunged into a dense garden recalling a savannah. The 40
41 semi-obscure interior frames the African section – designed as a sequence of caves 41
42 and walls in reddish clay. African critics and museologists were largely negative, 42
43 criticising the de-historicisation of artefacts immersed in a sombre darkness, 43
44 reminiscent of a colonial past (Musa 2007; Ndiaye 2007, 12–17; Traoré 2007). 44

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 198 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Alban Bensa even described the Branly display as a ‘loud and baroque scenario 1
2 constantly reminding the visitor that these works are other and come from a remote 2
3 otherness’ (Bensa 2007, 169; my translation). Personally, I find the quai Branly 3
4 display vastly disconcerting – technological forests darken Nouvel’s windows, 4
5 suggesting mysterious undertones. Artefacts are exhibited as exotic and remote, 5
6 belonging to an indistinct otherness. There is no sign of a postcolonial renewal, in 6
7 spite of its proud motto, ‘The Branly, where cultures meet’. 7
8 Several great European museums have devoted their attention to African 8
9 artefacts. The British Museum developed its Sainsbury Gallery (1999) for materials 9
10 previously hosted at the former Museum of Mankind, as well as its own collections, 10
11 including the wonderful Benin bronzes. Specialists have disapproved of various 11
12 aspects of the Sainsbury Gallery. Christine Eyene, in particular, has criticised its12
13 ‘ethnicising scenery’ (Eyene 2007, 139; my translation) and the way ancient and 13

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14 contemporary works are exhibited one next to another without apparent reason. 14
15 Furthermore, the Benin bronzes’ captions do not explain their link to the slave trade.
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In the last decade, however, the British Museum has undergone an interesting
reorganisation due to its director, Neil MacGregor. His interpretation of the
museum’s functions opened new perspectives, in particular improving the
approach to non-European exhibits. In a successful BBC broadcast followed by
a book, MacGregor outlined the British Museum’s mission: ‘to tell the history
of the world by deciphering the messages which objects communicate across
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22 time’ – objects that ‘speak of whole societies and complex processes rather than 22
23 individual events, and sometimes have meanings far beyond the intention of their 23
24 original makers’ (MacGregor 2010, xv). 24
25 The British Museum’s African collections have always been, and still are, 25
26 adverse to categorisation, mixing items of ethnographic nature with works of 26
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27 enormous artistic value. This is the birthmark of most European collections, 27

28 proof of the European reluctance towards reading African art. The European gaze 28
29 marked Africa as the absolute other, hence the unwillingness of European art 29
30 critics to evaluate African artworks as ‘art’ until their ‘discovery’ by the modernist
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31 generation of Paris artists. Yet even nowadays, established critics often seem 31
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32 embarrassed by the work of contemporary African artists, especially when hailing 32

33 directly from Africa rather than from the diaspora. Museums in Africa could help 33
34 in understanding and evaluating African art, as shown, amongst others, by the 34
35 examples of the Fondation Zinsou, the Musée National du Mali and the National 35
36 Gallery in Bulawayo. Thanks to the galleries in the Benin capital of Porto Novo, 36
37 local artist Romuald Hazoumé’s impressive works were exhibited in 2007 at the 37
38 British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 38
39 39
40 40
41 Slavery and Museums 41
42 42
43 In this light, it is worth exploring exhibitions on slavery within European museums 43
44 of Africa. The bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade (2007) has seen a 44

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22 Figure 15.1 International Slavery Museum, Liverpool. Ibo village with 22
23 young man (reconstruction). Photograph by Itala Vivan, 2007 23
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26 number of initiatives, including the first International Slavery Museum – mounted 26
27 in a wing of the old Maritime Museum in the port of Liverpool, formerly the 27
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28 hub of the triangular trade. It was a unique opportunity to invent something new 28
29 in a field with no precedents. Unfortunately, curator and consultants missed the 29
30 boat. They offered a display organised along lamentably old lines, starting with 30
31 the reconstruction of a pseudo-African village similar to those in the infamous 31
32 colonial expositions (Figure 15.1). 32
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33 I attended its inauguration and judged it negatively – in spite of occasional 33

34 details showing goodwill and a certain perceptiveness, such as a dark room 34
35 creating a blank interval within the exhibition symbolising the frightening Middle 35
36 Passage (Vivan 2008). 36
37 The representation of slavery is a very special case. It directly implicates Europe 37
38 and America as well as Africa. One cannot evade the necessity of involving history 38
39 at every step of the display, even though the persistent shirking of responsibilities 39
40 has dulled memory and awareness on one side, while on the other present-day 40
41 racial experience has transformed the immediacy of pain into a dull throb. Very 41
42 few material objects survive. An astute representation should be based on a strong 42
43 and fearless conceptual imagination. How to represent the horror and atrocity of 43
44 the slave trade, its peculiar tragedy as a prolonged holocaust? Art appears most 44

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 200 The Postcolonial Museum

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22 Figure 15.2 Zanzibar Slavery Memorial (detail). Photograph by Itala Vivan, 22
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27 and lonely statues of a monument in Zanzibar (Figure 15.2). 27

28 The empty spaces of the Maison des Esclaves in Gorée cry out to the ocean 28
29 as it licks the outer walls with a sinister rhythm. The Slave House in Cape Town 29
30 stands as a concrete historical memory finally freed from a mask trying to erase 30
31 slavery imposed first by colonialism and then by apartheid. But up until now, it 31
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32 has been impossible to create a meaningful museum of slavery able to go beyond 32

33 the status of archive or memorial, or (as in the case of Zanzibar and Gorée) deeper 33
34 than an evocation through sheer imagination. 34
35 The changes within European museums of Africa arising out of historical events, 35
36 political suggestions and the popular imagination are a challenge to researchers. For 36
37 example, Annie Coombes (1994) has examined Victorian and Edwardian England in 37
38 this manner, unveiling underlying mentalities and social constructs. 38
39 39
40 40
41 Museums in Africa 41
42 42
43 The necessity of reinventing museums – if not altogether inventing new ones – is 43
44 even stronger in Africa, although the institution is not indigenous to the continent. 44

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 What Museum for Africa? 201

1 There, until the end of colonialism, the few existing museums, including those in 1
2 Egypt, were designed on European models, if not directly by Europeans. Following 2
3 a concept used by Mary-Louise Pratt, James Clifford has called museums ‘contact 3
4 zones’ (Clifford 1997, 192–3), indicating a transformational space where arts 4
5 and cultures hitherto marginalised are supposed to be integrated (Ndiaye 2007). 5
6 However, such an integration is still a long way off. The persistent duality between 6
7 the ‘self’ of hegemonic cultures and the ‘other’ of Africa – with all its attending 7
8 stereotypes – can only be overcome via postcolonial approaches that should work 8
9 for Africa as well as for the West. 9
10 Even though it belongs to the same conceptual field, museum practice in Africa 10
11 differs from the West because of its past histories and present cultural conditions. 11
12 Memory might need museums in order to survive, but the haemorrhage of art 12
13 and artefacts from Africa – first caused by colonial plunder and then by greedy 13

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14 collectors and commerce – has been persistent and destructive. It has even been 14
15 suggested that new African museums might have no objects (McLeod 2004). In 15
16 the mean time, the wave of requests for the restitution of symbolically rich pieces 16
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mounts – but to no avail. One exception here would be the British Museum. At
one point it sold Nigeria a small number of Benin bronze plaques and managed
to sedate the reaction of public opinion by explaining they were duplicates. A
feasible solution would be to develop a co-operative network through which
African museums could obtain meaningful loans for long periods. A good example
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22 is the Branly’s temporary loan of the Béhanzin throne to the Fondation Zinsou. 22
23 However, there are concerns because the often precarious conditions in African 23
24 museums make such loans risky. 24
25 On gaining independence, African countries focused on museums and made 25
26 an effort to transform them into showcases of national prestige. Subsequently, 26
27 weak cultural policies reduced early interest, negatively impacting on museums 27
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28 such as the Musée Monod in Dakar and the Lagos National Museum. There are 28
29 instances of remarkable public initiatives, like the Musée National du Mali (Malé 29
30 2002). Furthermore, small institutions funded by private or international sponsors 30
31 (like the Fondation Zinsou) appear fruitful. Françoise Vergès sought to create 31
32 the Maison des Civilizations et de l’Unité Réunionnaise – where displays and 32
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33 installations were intended to represent Réunion’s creolised society.1 33

34 34
35 35
36 South Africa, a Special Case 36
37 37
38 Post-apartheid South Africa is unique. Old museums have been converted according 38
39 to different concepts and principles, changing representational perspectives and 39
40 including new histories. New museums were created to host stories previously 40
41 suppressed and/or denied, and tell the long history of resistance and revolution. 41
42 42
43 1 Unfortunately, recent political changes in the island’s administration have brought 43
44 an end to the Maison and closed it down. 44

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 202 The Postcolonial Museum

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22 Figure 15.3 Liliesleaf Farm and Museum, South Africa. Curiosity cabinet 22
23 with memorabilia and documents. Photograph by Itala Vivan, 23
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27 Such a transformation might well be defined as utterly postcolonial in its essence 27

28 (Vivan 2012). 28
29 Built to celebrate European art traditions, colonial wars and achievements, 29
30 old museums excluded Africans – considered objects of conquests and bearers of 30
31 what apartheid culture called ‘ethnic art’. The Cape Town South African Museum 31
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32 housed, amongst other artefacts, a group of plaster casts of the San people 32
33 (Bushmen), sculpted based on real human beings in the nineteenth century. In 33
34 1993, artist Pippa Skotnes made an installation with the broken pieces of such 34
35 casts – a gesture meant to deprecate the colonial gaze, denounce the KhoiSan 35
36 genocide and celebrate a new approach to difference by releasing and raising 36
37 voices from the past. However, the living San people disapproved, perceiving the 37
38 artwork as offensive, causing a cultural incident in the history of racialised South 38
39 Africa (Davison 1998; Skotnes 1996). This episode highlights the difficulty in 39
40 dealing with the tortured history of a colonial past, raising the question of who 40
41 authorises and narrates a memory which is very much alive in Africa. 41
42 Since 1994, nobody in South Africa has damaged or destroyed monuments, 42
43 memorials and sites of colonial pasts, white conquests, or even apartheid triumphs. 43
44 Public art collections were redesigned to accommodate African art of excellence. 44

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 What Museum for Africa? 203

1 Old buildings housed new selections of artists, while new museums were created 1
2 for contemporary art without racial distinctions – in Johannesburg, for instance, 2
3 Wits University created the Wits Art Museum. It was, and still is, an extraordinary 3
4 flourishing of new museums varying in inspiration but convergent in scope. 4
5 I recently visited the newest offering, a strangely attractive museum near 5
6 Rivonia, where the underground African National Congress leadership was arrested 6
7 in 1963. The old Liliesleaf Farm and its surroundings remain an authentic witness 7
8 to the legendary tale of the Black Pimpernel, Nelson Mandela. The restored farm 8
9 and cottages emerge as a theatre of hide-and-seek – the sites of a risky mission full 9
10 of adventures that have gone down in history. A unique blend of historical reality 10
11 and secrets of the struggle create a strongly suggestive atmosphere. Some sections 11
12 have been left empty, apart from life-size photographs; other spaces have been 12
13 turned into technological distributors of information (Figure 15.3). This is a model 13

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15 Again in South Africa, one can find an imaginative example of inventive 15
16 cultural sites embodying postcolonial inspiration – the Tshwane Freedom Park, 16
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soon to include archives and a museum. Designed by a team of artists, architects
and intellectuals, it sits on a hill facing the bleak Voortrekker Monument of Boer
inspiration. Its stones and vegetation are entirely indigenous. Its design tells an
alternative history: Africa as the cradle of mankind and birthplace of new liberties.
Inner spaces of meditation and remembrance induce thought and contemplation.
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22 The meandering Wall of Names bears the names of thousands of people who died 22
23 for freedom. Here too there were contestations, from those who wanted the Wall 23
24 to include soldiers who fought in Mozambique and Angola against democratic 24
25 governments. 25
26 Johannesburg’s Constitution Hill is another model example of a new 26
27 postcolonial venue – created on the site of the old English Fort, former symbol 27
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28 of colonial power, and infamous prison before and during apartheid. The very 28
29 building of the Constitutional Court is a visual representation of the principles of 29
30 freedom, transparency and inclusiveness it embodies. Next to it, the old prisons 30
31 for men and women have been transformed into a cultural museum. Here the new 31
32 generations can read their past while enjoying the beauty of luscious gardens and 32
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33 a stunning view over the city of gold, Egoli, the African name for Johannesburg. 33
34 South Africa is an example of how museums can play relevant roles in the 34
35 process of nation-building, especially when communities have to deal with a past 35
36 of divisions, struggles and wars induced by colonial oppression. 36
37 37
38 38
39 Abandonment and Transformation 39
40 40
41 The House of Wonders in Zanzibar – a stately building originally erected as a private 41
42 princely palace – is now a cultural museum hosting Swahili cultural artefacts in 42
43 an effort to celebrate tradition and create unity (Figure 15.4). The exhibits refer 43
44 back to a world of mixed races and cultures. The activities in Zanzibar’s Stone 44

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22 Figure 15.4 The House of Wonders, Zanzibar. A torn and dusty kanga, 22
23 symbol of neglect and decay. Photograph by Itala Vivan, 2012 23
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27 told, featuring life-size and model dhows (Sheriff 2000). Unfortunately, the whole 27
28 museum has fallen into disrepair and many precious items have disappeared. 28
29 Similar situations are regrettably frequent in African museums, abandoned 29
30 by public institutions or mismanaged by the state, even though they are full of 30
31 treasures. This is the case with the Lagos National Museum. There, extraordinary 31
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32 Nok statues are left to disintegrate in open courtyards. The derelict sites, 32
33 monuments and museums often (but not necessarily) originated in the colonial 33
34 era. They may have been abandoned out of hatred for colonialism. Examples 34
35 include Italian-style buildings in Asmara and a plaque for the Italian soldiers 35
36 who died in the battle of Adua. Even Saint-Louis in Senegal has fallen victim to 36
37 a similar attitude: it was once a superb colonial settlement, now a melancholy 37
38 old town. 38
39 Public African indifference to old African art is not due to carelessness. It is 39
40 symptomatic of cultural schizophrenia, writes Yacouba Konaté (2007), referring to 40
41 African artefacts being discarded, sold or thrown away as garbage by their owners 41
42 due to the pressure of colonial value systems. As suggested by Frantz Fanon, this 42
43 situation needs to be counteracted by a cultural integration of the African self: a 43
44 process that could find an ideally fluid space in the museum. 44

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1 The postcolonial museum should be innovative and situated in local cultures, 1

2 needs and customs, refraining from imported and compulsive models reminiscent 2
3 of colonial rule and hegemony. It would thus become a viable cultural experience 3
4 and practice for the societies it is addressing. Its shape and structure could result in 4
5 a space for social experiments from below, open not only to material artefacts, but 5
6 also to the immaterial heritage of African cultures, including their oral traditions 6
7 and literatures. 7
8 8
9 9
10 References 10
11 11
12 Amselle, Jean-Loup. 2005. L’art de la friche: essai sur l’art africain contemporain. 12
13 Paris: Flammarion. 13

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14 Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. 14
15 Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 15
16 Bennett, Tony. 1995. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: 16
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Routledge.

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Bensa, Alban. 2007. ‘Quel renouveau pour la muséographie?’. In Réinventer les
musées, edited by M. Ndiaye. Paris: L’Harmattan, 169–79.
Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth
Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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22 Coombes, Annie E. 1994. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and 22
23 Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. New Haven, 23
24 CT: Yale University Press. 24
25 Davison, Patricia. 1998. ‘Museums, Memorials, and Public Memory’. In 25
26 Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa, edited by Sarah 26
27 Nuttall and Carli Coetzee. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 143–60. 27
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28 de L’Estoile, Benoît. 2007. Le goût des autres: de l’exposition coloniale aux arts 28
29 premiers. Paris: Flammarion. 29
30 Eyene, Christine. 2007. ‘Vivre l’objet: interprétation et scénographie au British 30
31 Museum’. In Réinventer les musées, edited by M. Ndiaye. Paris: L’Harmattan, 31
32 135–40. 32
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33 Gray, Stephen. 2009. ‘The Colonial Exposition’. Kunapipi XXI: 32–3. 33

34 Greenblatt, Stephen. 1991. ‘Resonance and Wonder’. In Exhibiting Cultures: The 34
35 Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. 35
36 Lavine. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 42–56. 36
37 Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. 1992. Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge. 37
38 London: Routledge. 38
39 Konaté, Yacouba. 2007. ‘Musées en Afrique: esthétique du désenchantement’. In 39
40 Réinventer les musées, edited by M. Ndiaye. Paris: L’Harmattan, 18–27. 40
41 Lionnet, Françoise. 2004. ‘The Mirror and the Tomb: Africa, Museums, and 41
42 Memory’. In Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, edited by Bettina 42
43 Messias Carbonell. London: Blackwell, 92–103. 43
44 MacGregor, Neil. 2010. A History of the World in 100 Objects. London: Allen Lane. 44

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1 Malé, Salia. 2002. ‘Mali: Urban Material Culture in Museums. The National 1
2 Museum of Mali’. In Museums and Urban Culture in West Africa, edited by 2
3 Alexis Adandé and Emmanuel Arinze. Oxford: J. Currey, 104–8. 3
4 Marstine, Janet, ed. 2006. New Museum Theory and Practice. Oxford: Blackwell. 4
5 McLeod, Malcolm. 2004. ‘Museum Without Collections: Museum Philosophy in 5
6 West Africa’. In Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, edited by Bettina 6
7 Messias Carbonell. London: Blackwell, 455–60. 7
8 Musa, Hassan. 2007. ‘Les fantômes d’Afrique dans les musées d’Europe’. In 8
9 Réinventer les musées, edited by M. Ndiaye. Paris: L’Harmattan, 28–37. 9
10 Ndiaye, Malik. 2007. ‘Les musées en Afrique, l’Afrique au Musée: quelles 10
11 nouvelles perspectives?’. In Réinventer les musées, edited by M. Ndiaye. 11
12 Paris: L’Harmattan, 12–17. 12
13 Sheriff, Abdul. 2000. ‘Zanzibar: Encapsulating History. The Palace Museum and 13

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14 the House of Wonders’. In Museums and History in West Africa, edited by 14
15 Claude D. Ardouin and Emmanuel Arinze. Washington, DC: Smithsonian 15
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Institution Press, 155–63.

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Skotnes, Pippa, ed. 1996. Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen. Cape
Town: University of Cape Town Press.
Traoré, Aminata. 2007. ‘Musée du quai Branly: ainsi nos oeuvres d’art ont droit
de cité là où nous sommes, dans l’ensemble, interdits de séjour’. In Réinventer
les musées, edited by M. Ndiaye. Paris: L’Harmattan, 132–4.
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22 Vivan, Itala. 2008. ‘Il bicentenario britannico e i magazzini della memoria 22
23 postcoloniale’. Culture 21: 41–54. 23
24 ——. 2012. ‘(Ri)costruire la memoria nel Sudafrica postapartheid: musei culturali 24
25 e siti celebrativi’. In Prisma Sudafrica: la nazione arcobaleno a vent’anni dalla 25
26 liberazione, edited by Lidia De Michelis et al. Florence: Le Lettere, 63–92. 26
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 1 Chapter 16 1
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3 Egyptian Chemistry: From Postcolonial to 3
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5 Post-humanist Matters 5
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7 Ursula Biemann 7
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12 Egyptian Chemistry has involved making a radical break with my long-term 12
13 investigation of migratory systems. The move from a postcolonial to a post- 13

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14 humanist practice is by no means simply an expansion, embracing a larger, 14
15 more universal scope. On the contrary, it involves a fundamental shift in the 15
metaphysical understanding of how differences come to matter. In the case of
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Egyptian Chemistry, it became a voyage into molecular structures.
The question of how reality constitutes itself, how things materialise, and
specifically what role an artist can play in this, has been on my agenda for
years. I have engaged with a number of tools that could help me understand the
dynamics of discursive practices in the material world. A crucial instrument in
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22 this investigation has been feminist theory, deeply influenced by postcolonial and 22
23 race theory, which introduced the notion of performativity as a way to rethink the 23
24 production of differences and boundaries, both in terms of identity and geography. 24
25 A number of cultural geographers have contested the view of space as a neutral 25
26 backdrop against which events unfold. First and foremost was Henri Lefebvre, 26
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27 who insisted that space and society are mutually constituted and that space is an 27
28 agent of change, playing an active role in the unfolding of events. All this required 28
29 a rethinking of how reality can be imagined without fixed coordinates. 29
30 30
31 31
The Spatialisation of Migration
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32 32
33 33
34 These theoretical concerns were at the heart of Sahara Chronicle, a video-research 34
35 project on the clandestine transit-migration across the Sahara which I conducted 35
36 during 2006–2009. For the most part, the migrants in question are from West 36
37 Africa, and use the Sahel zone and the Maghreb as a transit space to reach the 37
38 Mediterranean. In a number of field trips to Morocco, Niger, Libya, Mauritania 38
39 and Senegal, I trailed the hotspots, documenting their vast migration system. This 39
40 ensemble of videos does not pursue a notion of absolute space as rendered in maps 40
41 with grids that locate naturally bounded features such as land or a people. Such a 41
42 form of representation turns a dynamic temporal process into real, physical things 42
43 inside a named container. Sahara Chronicle, on the contrary, is a videocartography 43
44 project that maps the correlation between economic factors, historical conditions, 44

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 210 The Postcolonial Museum

1 spatial and epistemological practices, cultural specificities and ecological 1

2 developments, all of which play into this particular kind of mobility in the Sahara. 2
3 Attention was focused on Agadez in the heart of Niger, which is the capital of the 3
4 Touareg and an important traffic node for migration toward Libya and Algeria. 4
5 The unresolved forceful division of Touareg territories, now redistributed among 5
6 five nations, has forced them into a transnational existence by definition. They 6
7 practise a very fluid kind of unbounded space that clashes with the laws of land 7
8 ownership of the occupying powers. The Touareg rebellion for independence in 8
9 the 1990s was directly linked to the uranium mining that had been going on in 9
10 their territory without their benefiting from the wealth generated. So they sought 10
11 alternative economic opportunities and began to traffic in migrants. 11
12 Sahara Chronicle works with a notion of spatialisation as a never-ending, 12
13 power-laced process engaged in by a wide variety of actors – water bearers, 13

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14 smugglers, Red Crescent personnel, rebel leaders, drone surveillance sensors, 14
15 refugees, fishermen and so on. My approach to migration in this and other works 15
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is that of an intertwined system of great agency, topographic knowledge and
connectivity that together generate migratory space. I use the video camera as
a cognitive tool to write counter-geographies, geographies which, rather than
affirming and reinforcing control regimes of borders and mobility, document the
ways in which people subvert and transgress borders and obstacles that have been
imposed on them. I favour a systemic approach to migration over one grounded in
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22 the migratory experience per se. 22
23 The installation is a direct reflection of these aesthetic strategies in that 23
24 the videos are exhibited simultaneously as an arrangement in the museum 24
25 space, some on monitors, some projected. So there is a temporal dimension 25
26 of synchronicity as well. With its loose interconnectedness and its widespread 26
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27 geography, Sahara Chronicle mirrors the migration network itself. It does 27

28 not aim to construct a homogenous, overarching, contemporary narrative of a 28
29 phenomenon that has long roots in colonial Africa and is extremely diverse and 29
30 fragile in its present social organisation and human experience. No authorial 30
31 voice, or any other narrative device, is used to link the carefully chosen scenes 31
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32 together. The installation is an account of the spatial practice of migration by 32

33 means of logistic nodes, border passages, places of hiding, regrouping, detention 33
34 and so on. The space in between these specific sites is only brought together in 34
35 the minds of the viewers. Implicating viewers in the geographic production, as it 35
36 were, is a way of using them as a psycho-social resource to complete and extend 36
37 the work. This, and a number of previous videos I have made, are all based on the 37
38 premise that reality is something that comes into being through the movement of 38
39 people and that this is how space unfolds and becomes meaningful. I do this by 39
40 using investigative fieldwork as an artistic practice so that it becomes part of the 40
41 process of reality-making and world-making. 41
42 I use the term ‘counter-geography’ to describe the imaging of the subversive 42
43 practices of space and mobility of clandestine migrants, weaving a complementary 43
44 narrative to the classic media representation of illegal migrants. The latter images 44

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 Egyptian Chemistry: From Postcolonial to Post-humanist Matters 211

1 tend to focus on surveillance and containment, mostly pointing the camera at 1

2 failed attempts to flee. My videos fill a representative vacuum left by classic media 2
3 images. Fieldwork is central in my performative understanding of artistic practice, 3
4 for it takes into account the fact that knowing does not come from standing at a 4
5 distance and representing, but from a direct material engagement with the world. 5
6 That is how artistic practices inscribe themselves in the processes of materialisation 6
7 that are going on all around. That is how I inscribe myself in the space of mobility 7
8 which I document. 8
9 9
10 10
11 The Performativity of Definition 11
12 12
13 This whole question of how things materialise is tremendously important if one 13

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14 aspires to have any sort of impact on the world. How do matter and meaning 14
15 intertwine? This elementary question is relevant to institutionalisations of all 15
16 kind, including museums. Strangely enough, quantum physics can help with this 16
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question, for it takes the notion of performativity to a whole different level. For
quantum theorists too, reality is not something pre-existing ‘out there’, it comes
into being by measurement – that is, through attempts at defining boundaries
and properties. Quantum physics asserts that the properties of an object are
indeterminate before its measurement. It is not that we do not know the object
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22 before that moment, but only once it has been measured is it clear whether it is 22
23 particle or wave, or more remarkably, both particle and wave. Indeterminacy is a 23
24 state that is difficult to grasp and actually quite disturbing. Only in the instant of 24
25 observation is it identified as either a particle, in which case it has weight and is 25
26 positioned in space and time, or a wave, and thus unlocatable, pure energy. The 26
27 indeterminacy is resolved by the process of measurement with all its specificities, 27
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28 human, technological, institutional and so on. It is this performative moment that 28

29 generates matter through a differentiating act. The object observed is inseparable 29
30 from the agencies of observation, and the two intra-actively constitute each other 30
31 in making worlds. This is how we can be part of the world in its differential 31
32 becoming. This is not the same as participatory observation – although this too is a 32
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33 form of quantum behaviour – nor as saying that context determines perception and 33
34 hence the meaning of an object, as in an institutional critique which assumes that 34
35 all you have to do is recontextualise an object for its meaning to change. Quantum 35
36 theory demolishes any claim that we can have a knowledge of the world, from 36
37 above and outside, and tells us that there can only be knowing as part of being. It 37
38 is not simply an epistemological understanding, but also an ontological one. This 38
39 is how reality constitutes itself, both materially and discursively. 39
40 By the same token, it is not enough to put the observer/knower back in the 40
41 picture and merely acknowledge our situatedness – as feminist theory proposed 41
42 by introducing a positioned epistemology to counter a universalising humanism. 42
43 It goes a step further by taking account of the fact that we are part of the world’s 43
44 differential becoming. Difference is what matters, as theoretical particle physicist 44

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 212 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Karen Barad writes in her insightful book Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007). 1
2 Difference is the process of mattering. The world articulates itself differently. That 2
3 is how one part of the world makes itself known to another part of the world. Part 3
4 of the world becomes bounded and propertied in its emergent intelligibility to 4
5 another part of the world. This process generates complementarity. Measurement 5
6 produces determinate values for the measured quantity, leaving the complementary 6
7 quantities indeterminate. We are constantly producing a world, half of which 7
8 remains invisible. What matters is marked off from that which is excluded from 8
9 mattering, but not once and for all. Exclusions constitute an open space of agency, 9
10 they are the changing conditions of possibilities. So far, critical social theories 10
11 have mainly focused on the power relations that produce exclusions with the aim 11
12 of reintroducing and strengthening the invisible complementarity, much as I have 12
13 done with videos that place female assembly workers or clandestine migrants 13

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14 back in the picture – to bring the invisible into visibility. Everyone can see the 14
15 utility of this strategy: it does something concrete, has a defined purpose, has an 15
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effectiveness built into it. But given the fact that the world continually articulates
itself differently, there is no doubt that it is also a Sisyphean labour.
Quantum behaviour helps us understand what knowledge does and how it
relates to being. It demonstrates that practices of knowing and being are mutually
implicated, not isolated entities. And furthermore, knowing is not a human
privilege. As Barad argues, every living thing able to distinguish between self and
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22 the environment of which it is a part, by recognising danger, food, shelter and so 22
23 on, in order to survive, is involved in this process of mattering. The performative 23
24 humanist impulse to categorise, differentiate and study has created hard boundaries 24
25 of demarcation, which have kept large parts of the world from mattering ‘in a 25
26 certain way’. 26
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27 The museum is not simply a place to store, represent and exhibit previously 27
28 existing facts and artefacts on difference, it is the apparatus through which 28
29 difference comes into being. The greatest problem the museum faces in postcolonial 29
30 times is not a matter of inclusion or exclusion, but the fact that the museum itself 30
31 is the discursive-material apparatus through which this very distinction matters 31
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32 (through criteria, typologies, by creating differentiality, judgement). The museum 32

33 is a boundary-drawing device. More importantly, perhaps, the material-discursive 33
34 apparatus of the museum not only interprets what has already materialised, but 34
35 sets the criteria for the conditions of future possibilities. Quantum physics teaches 35
36 us that the limitation is not imposed by the actual information the observer has 36
37 extracted about the object of interest, but lies in the information that could in 37
38 principle be extracted within the constraints established by the preparation. The 38
39 mere fact that things become distinguishable creates possibilities of definition. 39
40 So, to challenge traditional epistemology, we cannot merely welcome females, 40
41 slaves, animals and other dispossessed others into the field of the knowers from 41
42 which they have been excluded, In any case, this self-empowered process has 42
43 been going on for quite some time already, and now a more radical post-humanist 43
44 vision is needed. The ‘postcolony’ is neither a place nor a time period, but first 44

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 Egyptian Chemistry: From Postcolonial to Post-humanist Matters 213

1 and foremost a critical engagement with humanist principles. The postcolonial 1

2 museum is one that challenges Humanism. This goes beyond a critique of Euro- 2
3 centrism to propose one that fundamentally rethinks the nature–culture dynamics 3
4 and the way mind and matter interrelate, not as two separate units, but from within, 4
5 in a molecular alliance, so to speak. 5
6 6
7 7
8 Egyptian Chemistry: A Reconfiguration on a Molecular Level 8
9 9
10 Let me now turn to Egyptian Chemistry (2012), a new video research-creation.1 10
11 The project basically explores the chemistry and agro-ecology of the Nile. Like 11
12 Sahara Chronicle, it is a composite work, made up of a number of videos. With 12
13 Egyptian Chemistry, I have pursued my effort to dislocate the container model 13

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14 of space as well as the spatialisation of time as a simple continuum. In addition, 14
15 I engage here in a third relation that now needs reconsideration: the mind–matter 15
16 dynamic. For this reason, I turned to quantum physics and to other proliferating 16
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theories in the range of speculative realism and relational ontologies, such as Bruno
Latour’s actor–network scheme, and all sorts of emerging theories that plead for
the democracy of all actors, human and non-human. Now that the boundaries of
gender and ethnicity, as well as those between humans and technology, have been
rigorously dismantled, we are face to face with the last stronghold of difference
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22 that separates us humans from the world. I see an interest, and indeed a certain 22
23 urgency, in seriously engaging my artistic production – my fieldwork, signifying 23
24 practice, organising system, my whole cosmology – with the possibility of 24
25 overcoming this fictitious boundary that sets us apart as subjects. 25
26 Egyptian Chemistry explores the hybrid water ecologies of Egypt, and the 26
27 Nile in particular, to probe transformations that take place from within. Egypt is a 27
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28 hydraulic civilisation. Egyptians have long built large-scale engineering projects 28

29 like dams and canals, and launched land reclamation ventures on a literally 29
30 pharaonic scale in order to reallocate water across time and space for communities 30
31 and entire ecosystems. There is almost a mythical dimension to the impact of the 31
32 High Dam on the fate of Egypt. When I first came to Aswan, the scenery was eerie. 32
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33 The naked concrete structure looked like a spaceship crashed into the river valley. 33
34 Driven deep into the ground and partially submerged, it backs up the water coming 34
35 from Ethiopia. The High Dam is a time barrier. It has changed floods, seasons, 35
36 crops and species. The planetary positioning is one of discontinuity. 36
37 It has been clear to every president since Anwar Abdel Nasser that to be in 37
38 power in Egypt, you need to be in control of water. This has prompted a huge 38
39 land redistribution campaign in favour of the peasants. In the 1990s, under the 39
40 neo-liberal rule of Mubarak, local food, and particularly wheat production, which 40
41 41
42 1  Egyptian Chemistry was first exhibited in a smaller version at Alexandria 42
43 Contemporary Arts Forum in November 2012, and complete at the Neuer Berliner 43
44 Kunstverein in March 2013. 44

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 214 The Postcolonial Museum

1 1
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Figure 16.1 Video still from Ursula Biemann, Egyptian Chemistry, 2012.
Earth sampling at Toshka, a giant land reclamation project on
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22 is a staple for millions, was aggressively replaced by export crops cultivated by 22
23 large-scale agro-industries. Nasser’s land reform was systematically dismantled. 23
24 Hydraulic infrastructures are absolutely vital for the national food supply since 24
25 there is virtually no rainfall in this country. These built environments – these hydro- 25
26 engineering projects – are an expression of how governments conceive of ‘nature’ 26
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27 and place it at the service of society; they embody particular ecological paradigms. 27
28 Any dam, barrage or irrigation canal paves the way for the commodification of 28
29 water. By processing and facilitating water, it automatically becomes something 29
30 that can be charged for. Egyptian peasants take it for granted that in their lush Nile 30
31 Valley, farmland comes with the appropriate amount of water. And for the time 31
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32 being, Egypt has not proceeded to privatise water, although large amounts of Nile 32
33 water are diverted to service developments for industrial agriculture in the desert. 33
34 Toshka (Figure 16.1) is one of these colossal development projects, drawing 34
35 water from Lake Nasser into a desert depression. Sterile lands, impossible for 35
36 human life, are turned into field labs for testing new ways of being human. Parallel 36
37 valleys, desert colonies and artificial food production have manufactured a world 37
38 in which science is programmed to overcome nature, turning desert dust into 38
39 soggy fertility. 39
40 Egypt’s topography is changing. Extensive irrigation is drawing heavily on the 40
41 underground aquifers, causing the Nile Delta to sink at the rate of a centimetre a year. 41
42 Among the futuristic land reclamation ventures, there is a pioneering integrated 42
43 seawater agriculture project on the Red Sea called New Nile Co. Apart from food 43
44 production, the project will also attempt to build up biomass with mangroves and 44

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 Egyptian Chemistry: From Postcolonial to Post-humanist Matters 215

1 other seawater plants to compensate for the dwindling ground, which will leave 1
2 the delta exposed to rising sea levels. More importantly, the ecology of the Nile 2
3 has changed due to the High Dam and a series of barrages built in the last century. 3
4 These structures have put an end to the migration of fish from Ethiopia through 4
5 the Mediterranean into the Atlantic and back. High-quality species suited to fast- 5
6 running currents have disappeared and made room for the large, lazy tilapia. And, 6
7 as a result of the diminished supply of oxygen that used to speed up their anaerobic 7
8 decay, organic pollutants have now turned into biochemical combat units infecting 8
9 pools and reaching land through the billions of irrigation canals. All these changes 9
10 reconfigure Egypt on a molecular level. 10
11 Egyptian Chemistry explores the interaction between hydraulic, chemical, 11
12 natural and human forces which together form the hybrid ecologies of Egypt. 12
13 Inscribed in these Egyptian hydraulic agro-ecologies are countless histories 13

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14 – those of modernisation, continuous land reforms, artificial fertilisation, 14
15 peasant activism. These historiographies of water culture and politics have 15
16 a decentralising impact, and resist, to some extent, the neo-liberal agro- 16
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management models which have prevailed in the last fifteen years. Sidelined
by neo-liberal government policies affecting credit lines, fertiliser and water
supplies, small farming in the Nile Valley has become unprofitable and the
young generation has moved to the cities seeking work. The urban centres
where the revolution broke out in January 2011 were full of people from the
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22 villages who had experienced a continuous aggravation of their livelihood. The 22
23 revolution has unleashed new visions and initiatives, in particular the desire for 23
24 non-governmental organisation and visionary sustainable projects. I went deep 24
25 into the Delta to meet some of the peasants who have recently begun to organise 25
26 themselves into unions. Under Mubarak, unionising was prohibited, so I was 26
27 curious to hear what their main concerns were. Shahinda Makal is a leading 27
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28 activist in their struggle. 28

29 Before being tamed by the engineers, the Nile was more generous and 29
30 democratic. With every high flood, it spread its fertilising mud evenly over the 30
31 entire Nile Valley. Then, with the introduction of hydraulic structures, fertilisers 31
32 became chemical, marketable, and hence subject to the political mechanism of 32
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33 agricultural subsidies: a matter of the social sphere. 33

34 It is these pivotal sites where natural and social processes intersect that are of 34
35 most interest to me. We take it for granted that scientific and engineering efforts 35
36 are generally directed toward making nature a better and more efficient resource 36
37 for the human species. The focus is understandably on human achievement. But 37
38 if we see past such anthropocentric visions, we have to admit that indeed, humans 38
39 have used the force of the Nile, but so have lazy fish, suspended pollutants, 39
40 ammonium nitrate, cement factories and wheat crops, all of which have their say 40
41 in the video. The river has to be thought of as a hybrid interactive system that 41
42 has always been organic, technological and social all at once. The Nile is like 42
43 a machine with enormous potential natural agency – electric, genetic, chemical, 43
44 thermal – a comprehensive expression of nature’s capacity to produce energy. 44

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 216 The Postcolonial Museum

1 This approach sees human agency as one among many actors in the generation 1
2 of a situation, some of which are signifying, others not. A particularly interesting 2
3 site in this respect is the hydraulic model of a section of the Nile near Asiut where 3
4 a new dam is to be built. The physical model is the size of a giant factory floor 4
5 and is an exact reproduction of the Nile bed over a stretch of 3 kilometres. It is 5
6 used to test the river’s behaviour when obstructed by hydraulic architectures. The 6
7 engineers drop paper scraps from the high ceiling down onto the running water, 7
8 and the serial photographs of the operation reveal the flow patterns of the river so 8
9 that the structures can be adjusted accordingly. The model acts as the temporary 9
10 interface between water and mind, between hydraulic force and mathematics. 10
11 Together they form a hybrid consciousness. 11
12 As a coalescing agent interacting with so many vital functions, water vigorously 12
13 shapes Egyptian life. But it is not enough to speak about the aesthetics of a hydraulic 13

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14 culture simply as a set of recurring spatial and infrastructural motifs, we have to 14
15 consider water – this indispensable primary substance, this ur-liquid – as a dominant 15
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Figure 16.2 Video still from Ursula Biemann, Egyptian Chemistry, 2012.
Water sampling in the Nile Delta

structure of experience that passes through the very molecules of a historical reality.
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22 In conjunction with hydraulic technologies, water is not only deeply transformative, 22
23 it generates a whole range of new products. Altered water chemistry changes soil 23
24 quality and entire agro-ecologies, thus shaping land management, urbanisation, 24
25 food supply chains and other collective organisations such as farmers’ unions and 25
26 revolutions. The bonds between all these components are neither causal nor simply 26
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27 economic. The ontology behind Egyptian Chemistry is that they form into dynamic 27
28 interactive clusters equipped with agency where desert developers and tiny water 28
29 pollutants are also pursuing their own effective actions. 29
30 The art project is based on field research where water samples were taken at 30
31 16 locations along the Nile and around the Delta wetlands (Figure 16.2). Their 31
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32 chemistry was probed and the locations documented in their socio-ecological 32

33 configuration. In a series of fairly short videos, Egyptian Chemistry brings the 33
34 knowledge from multiple sources – from atmospheric physics to hydraulic 34
35 modelling, peasant activism, agro-science, metaphysics and ecology – into a 35
36 single forum, forming an epistemogram or a sort of epistemological cartography. 36
37 This more wholesome approach goes back to an ensemble of practices 37
38 encompassing chemical, biological, metallurgical and philosophical dimensions, 38
39 represented by the original name Al Khemia, long before the epistemological 39
40 division into disciplines and subdisciplines set in. Al Khemia happened to be the 40
41 ancient word for Egypt, meaning ‘the Black Land’, possibly due to the muddy Nile 41
42 floods periodically fertilising the land. The term alludes to the vision that, before 42
43 anything else, the earth is a mighty chemical body where the crackling noise of the 43
44 forming and breaking of molecular bonds can be heard at all times. 44

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 Egyptian Chemistry: From Postcolonial to Post-humanist Matters 217

1 Metachemistry as Organising Principle 1

2 2
3 As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the project does not use geography 3
4 as a co-ordinating principle, it draws on metachemistry as a theory that explains 4
5 the transformation of matter in its molecular structure. In chemistry, substances 5
6 are characterised entirely by their willingness to bond and transform into new 6
7 compounds. In a highly selective disposition, molecular bonds are constantly 7
8 forming or breaking, inducing radical shifts in the identity of matter relentlessly 8
9 reworking the planetary composition. Chemistry is a theory of internal relations, a 9
10 recursive system where no class is defined in isolation. Everything, that is, results 10
11 from previous reactions. There is no beginning, only chemical insiders and their 11
12 sequential genealogies. 12
13 Apart from these inspirational ontological considerations, there is a practical 13

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14 side to chemistry with which I sympathise. In chemistry, you do not proceed 14
15 by metric measurements of a single quality, but through a web of chemical 15
16 operations (Bernal and Daza 2010). As hands-on practitioners, chemists try not 16
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only to describe and explain, but also to change the world. It is performative,
more evidently so than traditional physics. Chemistry is in everything. The
major shortcoming, as chemical theorist Jesper Sjöström (2007) points out, is
that chemistry fails to define its own social and ethical priorities, and instead
caters mostly to the needs of industry. It has an evil reputation. The purpose of
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22 chemistry could be redesigned with a view to supporting a more sustainable and 22
23 socially relevant future. 23
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42 Figure 16.3 Video still from Ursula Biemann, Egyptian Chemistry, 2012. 42
43 Water chemistry laboratory in art installation, Contemporary 43
44 Art Forum, Alexandria 44

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 218 The Postcolonial Museum

1 The core motif in Egyptian Chemistry is the collection of water samples at 1

2 specific sites along the Nile, some of which are rural, some industrial, others 2
3 urban. Another video, directly related to the first one, documents the same young 3
4 Egyptian, this time in a white coat, as he brings the Nile water samples into the 4
5 installation of Egyptian Chemistry at the Contemporary Art Forum in Alexandria, 5
6 where he rebottles them into chemistry lab glasses (Figure 16.3). 6
7 Egyptian Chemistry is almost an attempt to invent videographically a new 7
8 form of materialist universality, one that is fragile, plural, ragged, full of holes, yet 8
9 somehow coalesced by the muddy oneness of the planet itself. This new proposition 9
10 works along the lines of scientific naturalism, the methodologies of the social 10
11 sciences, particularly ethnography, but also with poetry, aesthetics and the mythic 11
12 imagination. I am not primarily focusing on strategies of representation. I have 12
13 come to realise that if we only culturalise the discourse in terms of the physical 13

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14 and chemical transformations our planet is currently undergoing by prioritising 14
15 meaning and representation, we fail to address a deeper problem. For if we are to 15
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speak about the non-human world – weather patterns, organic pollutants, copper
atoms – it will not suffice to deploy an anthropocentric discourse. Not everything
comes into being through human intention, we need to examine the ways in which
human and non-human realities emerge together in a variety of formations. Rather
than through a particular set of criteria, this is more likely to happen through the
hybrid consciousness engendered by the assemblage of technological, social and
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22 natural stuff, where some elements signify, others do not. Metachemistry grasps 22
23 this turbulent instance of physical and epistemic change and propels us into a 23
24 slightly altered dimension that can only be invoked mythically through space 24
25 travel, time barriers and the interbiospheric mobility of species. 25
26 26
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27 27
28 References 28
29 29
30 Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the 30
31 Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 31
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32 Bernal, Andrés and Edgar E. Daza. 2010. ‘On the Epistemological and Ontological 32
33 Status of Chemical Relations’. HYLE – International Journal for Philosophy 33
34 of Chemistry 16(2): 80–103. 34
35 Sjöström, Jesper. 2007. ‘The Discourse of Chemistry (and Beyond)’. HYLE – 35
36 International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry 13(2): 83–97. 36
37 37
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 1 Chapter 17 1
2 2
3 ‘The Lived Moment’: New Aesthetics for 3
4 4
5 Migrant Recollection 5
6 6
7 Peter Leese 7
8 8
9 9
10 10
11 11
12 Looking back from 2010, John Berger described A Seventh Man as ‘a little book 12
13 of life-stories, a sequence of lived moments – such as one finds in a family photo 13

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14 album’ (Berger and Mohr [1975] 2010, 8). In 1975, when it was first published, 14
15 writer John Berger and photographer Jean Mohr intended their ‘book about the 15
experience of Migrant Workers in Europe’ as both social critique and political 16
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intervention. They hoped, not entirely in vain, ‘to start a debate, and to encourage, 17
amongst other things, international working-class solidarity’ (Berger and Mohr 18
[1975] 2010, 7). Yet while it was initially dismissed by critics in the mid-1970s 19
as an awkward mix of poetic and polemic, this portrayal of ‘lived moments’ 20
subsequently found an unexpected readership. In translation, the book was taken 21
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22 up in the global South. It continues to be read in Istanbul, Madrid and Damascus, 22
23 in the places from which migrant workers set off, and by those who themselves 23
24 become migrant workers. 24
25 The appeal to this particular audience suggests an approach, a set of aesthetic 25
26 strategies, which incorporate their subject, which speak to the experience of 26
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27 migrants rather than merely ‘on behalf of’ or ‘for’ those whose lives they describe. 27
28 In the search for richer, more meaningful presentations of migration in the context 28
29 of the museum, Berger and Mohr’s ‘subjectivist’ approach suggests a rendition 29
30 of migrant experience which is meaningful because, for those who have lived it, 30
31 it is recognisable. I will return to this idea at the end of the chapter, but note here 31
that just as in 1975, the lives of labour migrant workers who arrive from beyond 32
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33 Europe’s borders often go unacknowledged, undetailed and unexplored. A Seventh 33
34 Man, by contrast, is filled with vivid, individual specificity as it details the ‘set 34
35 pieces’ of migrant experience: departure, transit and arrival. The authors attend 35
36 closely to the mixed emotions that accompany separation, to the disorienting 36
37 sensations of arrival at an unknown destination: 37
38 38
39 Everything looks new. The way people walk and move about at different levels, 39
40 as though each level was unmistakably the ground. The surfaces walked on, 40
41 or touched. The unusual sound which a usual movement makes. The seamless 41
42 joints between things. Even glass looks different here, thicker and less brittle. 42
43 The newness of the substance of things combines with the incomprehensibility 43
44 of the language. (Berger and Mohr [1975] 2010, 71) 44

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 220 The Postcolonial Museum

1 In such passages, and in the composite figure of ‘He: The migrant’, A Seventh 1
2 Man tells one variation of a common story, and having lived such a life, former or 2
3 present migrant readers may better recall and consider their own circumstances. 3
4 In addition, reviewing this account across the years since its publication, migrant 4
5 readers may better measure change from generation to generation, movement 5
6 from there to here, the passage of time from past to present. 6
7 The changing ways in which journalists, social commentators and sociologists, 7
8 engravers, photographers or film-makers have attempted to render, or preferred 8
9 to avoid, such ‘lived moments’ is a revealing theme in the historical exploration 9
10 of migrant experience. This ‘subjectivist’ approach has its own traditions and 10
11 conventions, but remains the concern of a politically engaged minority. To fully 11
12 describe how Berger and Mohr communicate the experience of migration, and 12
13 to consider more fully how it might prove useful for an archive or museum, 13

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14 requires an elaboration of the tradition to which A Seventh Man contributes, and 14
15 of the artistic techniques which the authors developed. To assess the continuing 15
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relevance of the ‘subjectivist’ aesthetic, I here consider a more recent account
within the same tradition. Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 feature film In This World
has many connections to A Seventh Man, but also develops its approach to reflect
the new global economic system as well as more recently expanded notions of
autonomy, individuality and agency which Berger and Mohr acknowledge have
emerged since 1975 (Berger and Mohr [1975] 2010, 7–10).
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23 23
24 Berger and Mohr’s Migrant Aesthetic 24
25 25
26 A Seventh Man intervenes in a protracted, highly politicised tussle over what it 26
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27 means to be a migrant. This mattered in 1975, as it does today, because the pooling 27
28 of mobile labour has been integral to the development of global capitalism: 28
29 since the time of European indenture and the emergent slave trade in the late 29
30 seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, such workers have powered the growth 30
31 of transnational economies. The meaning of migrant labour is especially revealing 31
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32 for Berger and Mohr since an understanding of systematic exploitation morally 32

33 discredits capital’s profit-driven self-justifications. 33
34 Historically, the usual form of migrant representation is ‘documentarist’: 34
35 observation from afar. The less common form, of which Berger and Mohr are 35
36 among the most compelling advocates, is ‘subjectivist’: intimation from ‘up 36
37 close’. Both approaches are continually present in the long tradition of migrant 37
38 representation and life-story-making: for example, in the indistinct boundaries 38
39 between ‘observer’ and ‘migrant’ accounts, the ‘fictional histories’ of the 39
40 eighteenth century, or in the engraved portraits and reportage of the nineteenth 40
41 century (Bannet 2011, 1–3; Leese et al. 2002). In the latter part of the twentieth 41
42 century, Berger and Mohr capture a moment of rising interest in subjectivity as 42
43 they re-work an older set of aesthetic strategies which give weight to particularities 43
44 of time and place, to specific social relations and mentalities. As A Seventh Man 44

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 ‘The Lived Moment’: New Aesthetics for Migrant Recollection 221

1 puts it: ‘to try to understand the experience of another it is necessary to dismantle 1
2 the world as seen from one’s own place within it, and to reassemble it as seen from 2
3 his’ (Berger and Mohr [1975] 2010, 96–7). The difficulty is, then, to imagine the 3
4 absence of opportunity, dignity and choice which confronts the underfed. Yet any 4
5 naming of the task itself misleads, since there can be no straightforward evocation 5
6 of another’s state of mind: ‘The subjectivity of others does not simply constitute a 6
7 different interior attitude to the same external facts. The constellation of facts, of 7
8 which he is the centre, is different’ (Berger and Mohr [1975] 2010, 98). 8
9 A Seventh Man emerges from a growing post-Second World War interest in 9
10 culture as ethnography and the democratising possibilities of the mass media. 10
11 The parallel rise of oral history in the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, is both as 11
12 historical discipline and as grassroots activist movement (Abrams 2010, 3–9). 12
13 Berger and Mohr add to these concerns their scepticism of conventional evidence, 13

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14 documentation or archives, and their acute awareness of intersubjectivity between 14
15 author, audience and subject. Both these themes are explored in their restless 15
16 working out of avant-garde techniques: for instance, in the single- or double-page 16
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spreads which juxtapose a holiday poster with a snapshot of elderly women and
young children in a village, or in a photograph of workers waiting on a railway
station platform (Berger and Mohr [1975] 2010, 184–5 and 220–21). Other kinds
of contrasting, re-contextualising visual evidence are employed: work manual
diagrams, historical or publicity photographs, and paintings; a wide-angle view
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22 of a factory worker on a shop floor on one page, and a close-up of that same 22
23 worker’s face on the following page (Berger and Mohr [1975] 2010, 108–9, 114 23
24 and 172). This mixing and matching of images to create new visual contrasts as 24
25 well as to suggest new meanings is enhanced by the lack of identifying references 25
26 to time or place. Without such references, each picture takes on an artificial or 26
27 ‘fictional’ quality, and heightens the reader’s awareness of how the subject, the 27
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28 migrant, might see or even stand inside such a scene. Similarly various written 28
29 sources are quoted in the text, but for the most part they are only cited in the 29
30 ‘Acknowledgements’: Attila Jozsef’s poem ‘The Seventh’, which gives the book 30
31 its title; Raymond Williams’s The Country and the City; economic and political 31
32 commentaries; Joyce’s Ulysses on people and trams in the city, and Karl Marx 32
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33 and Henry Ford, with their diametrically opposed views on repetitive labour. Here 33
34 again the authors explain their intention not to ‘divert attention from a larger truth’ 34
35 by reference to specifics of time or place, but rather to achieve for their account a 35
36 ‘universality’ (Berger and Mohr [1975] 2010, 241). 36
37 A Seventh Man emerges from Berger’s engagement with the oppositional 37
38 artistic and political theory of the inter-war years. Its authors are interested 38
39 in wider notions of truth that can be gleaned from a particular consciousness, 39
40 but at the same time, in the consciousness of migrants there is a symptom of 40
41 a more commonly felt estrangement inherent in modern capitalist society. 41
42 Hence, for instance, the cultivation of a ‘dialogic’ relationship between image 42
43 and text, or creation of image/text contrasts in genre and typology, which finds 43
44 its antecedents in Tucholsky and Heartfield’s Deutschland, Deutschland über 44

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 222 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Alles (1929). Likewise, Berger’s model of meaning production, his awareness of 1

2 how to allude to the consciousness of migrant workers, is informed by Lukacs’s 2
3 exploration in History and Class Consciousness (1923) of social relations as 3
4 ‘reified’ (Roberts 1998, 129–34; Merrifield 2012, 62–4). A Seventh Man is in 4
5 this sense a profoundly political work. It attempts to disrupt the apparently 5
6 objective relations between migrant worker and host society by visualising the 6
7 experiences and expressing the emotions of those who are otherwise hidden, 7
8 thereby exposing the ‘production’ of their human awareness. Simultaneously, A 8
9 Seventh Man seeks to disrupt and remake the awareness of readers, from whom 9
10 the common human experiences of movement, mobility and displacement, 10
11 the economic basis of human relations, are equally hidden. Berger’s opening 11
12 statement plays out this thought: 12
13 13

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14 In a dream the dreamer wills, acts, reacts, speaks, and yet submits to the 14
15 unfolding of a story which he scarcely influences. The dream happens to him. 15
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Afterwards he may ask another to interpret it. But sometimes a dreamer tries to
break his dream by deliberately waking himself up. This book represents such
an intention within a dream which the subject of the book and each of us is
dreaming. (Berger and Mohr [1975] 2010, 11)

Berger and Mohr’s intention is, then, to refuse the distinction between fiction and
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22 history, between word and image, between subject and object. By placing all of 22
23 these within a dialogic framework, writer and photographer seek to expand their 23
24 working method, which has at its centre the humanistic values of ‘empathy, exile 24
25 and metaphor’. As Nikos Papastergiadis suggests in his discussion of Berger’s 25
26 work: ‘We need a form of recognition that is neither sentimental nor abstract, a 26
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27 code of interaction between the self and the other that admits the reflexivity of 27
28 both positions and a mode of criticism which opens that potential space within 28
29 society for responding to alternatives’ (Papastergiadis 1993, 5) 29
30 The purpose of Berger and Mohr’s visual and textual strategies, as John 30
31 Roberts argues in The Art of Interruption (1998), is the creation of a counter- 31
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32 archive. Through this process of gathering and displaying, a collective, democratic 32

33 expression of ‘the lived moment’ becomes possible. The effect of this counter- 33
34 archive is also to disassemble and remake our interpretive framework, our sense 34
35 of who migrants are and how they live, which in turn allows us to better grasp 35
36 ‘the experience of another’ (Roberts 1998, 133). As Berger writes in the third 36
37 of his major collaborations with Jean Mohr, Another Way of Telling (1982), it is 37
38 by this process that the deceptive ‘now-ness’ of photographs achieves a truth- 38
39 telling quality: ‘It allows what they [photographs] show to be appropriated by 39
40 reflection. The world they reveal, frozen, becomes tractable. The information 40
41 they contain becomes permeated with feeling. Appearances become the language 41
42 of a life lived’ (Berger and Mohr 1982, 289). By jamming the wavelengths of 42
43 normal transmission, by amplifying, repeating and de-familiarising, Berger and 43
44 Mohr draw attention to viewer, subject and audience. Objectification gives way 44

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 ‘The Lived Moment’: New Aesthetics for Migrant Recollection 223

1 to possible interiorities, so that the audience may see a version of the migrant’s 1
2 own ‘image-memories’. 2
3 3
4 4
5 Michael Winterbottom’s Migrant Aesthetic 5
6 6
7 A Seventh Man is part of a larger set of concerns expressed by Berger and Mohr 7
8 across three books. It is preceded by A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country 8
9 Doctor (1967) and followed up by Another Way of Telling (1982). All three books 9
10 address the lived experience of impoverished rural people. This loosely connected 10
11 trilogy also examines the aesthetics of photography, the wider social world of 11
12 visual experience and expression, as well as the ‘meaning of appearances’ (Berger 12
13 and Mohr 1982, 7). Another central theme is the cultural deprivation of significant 13

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14 portions among any given population, particularly their lack of resources to 14
15 interpret, articulate or transmit their own experience. Yet, as Berger argues in A 15
16 Fortunate Man, this lack of resources should not be taken to mean that the inner 16
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experience which cannot be expressed is straightforward or simple. Rather, each
holds within her- or himself a ‘complex convergence of philosophical traditions,
feelings, half-realised ideas, atavistic instincts, imaginative intimations, which live
behind the simplest hope or disappointment of the simplest person’ (Berger and
Mohr 1967, 110). In this view, those who suffer physical and cultural deprivation
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22 are unable to ‘translate’ their feelings into words which clarify experience. Behind 22
23 this carefully framed statement is the political rage which drives A Seventh Man: 23
24 the analysis of inequalities in the global economic system, the romantic Marxist 24
25 view of labour alienation, the disgust at Western Europe’s persistent, unthinking 25
26 neo-colonialism (Merrifield 2012, 62–4). 26
27 A more recent instance of the ‘subjectivist’ tradition, a rare example to rival 27
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28 Berger and Mohr’s account, is Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 feature film In This 28
29 World, which its director has described as an explicitly political response to the 29
30 ‘asylum seeker’ debates of the early 2000s in Britain: 30
31 31
32 In This World responds to a chronic virulent strain of anti-immigrant 32
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33 scaremongering in the right-wing British tabloids like the Daily Mail and Daily 33
34 Express …. Whenever I come across them, I’m always astonished by the huge 34
35 amount of space given to stories about bogus asylum seekers and people invading 35
36 our country …. It’s an obsession. We were lucky with In This World – in Britain 36
37 it got a lot of press coverage and sparked discussion about immigration, and 37
38 maybe someone who saw it would spend an hour thinking about what it’s like to 38
39 be a refugee. (Winter 2010, 62–3) 39
40 40
41 To better convey ‘what it’s like to be a refugee’, the film blurs the boundaries of 41
42 fact and fiction, creating a singular tale which can at the same time describe the 42
43 experiences of many. The film complements and enhances the achievement of A 43
44 Seventh Man. Its less rigid structuring of experience lets in more of the fluidity 44

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 224 The Postcolonial Museum

1 of real-world events; where Berger and Mohr’s migrants seem powerless, In This 1
2 World grants event and personality greater space to manoeuvre. 2
3 The film traces a journey made by Jamal and Enayat, two displaced Afghan 3
4 boys, ethnic Pashtun, who live about twenty-five miles from Peshawar in 4
5 northwest Pakistan, in the Shamshatoo refugee camp. Through family connections 5
6 and finances, they arrange to have themselves smuggled out of Pakistan in order 6
7 to head for what they hope will be a better life in Europe. To achieve this, they 7
8 have to travel across Iran and into Turkey, go from Istanbul to Trieste hidden with 8
9 others in a freight container, then get to Marseilles. Their journey eventually leads 9
10 to the Sangatte refugee centre in France, and then on to London. Like A Seventh 10
11 Man, In This World is loosely structured around a series of intense, lived moments. 11
12 It shows those who have already been moved on once as refugees displaced for 12
13 a second time, now from what little remains of their family. They are set adrift, 13

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14 but also strive to better their lives. To make the film, production crew, director 14
15 and non-professional actors travelled along one possible route that refugees were 15
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known to take. Moreover, the two main actors, Jamal Udin Torabi (Jamal) and
Enayatullah (Enayat), were recruited from the Shamshatoo camp, and so were
likely candidates to make the journey in reality.
Like A Seventh Man, In This World plays with distinctions of artifice and
actual: devices such as voiceover, text and map on the screen make the film in
some respects document-like, but as Winterbottom said in one interview:
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22 22
23 The film does play with what’s true and what’s not …. Take Jamal. He’s an 23
24 Afghan refugee; his parents are refugees; he’s young enough that he was actually 24
25 born in the camp. Most of his family live in one of the camps next door to the 25
26 one we filmed in. His brother and sister in the film are really his brother and 26
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27 sister. His mum is alive, but in the film she is not, so that is fictional. (Winter 27
28 2010, 61) 28
29 29
30 Just as Berger and Mohr draw on the political and artistic tactics of a compressed, 30
31 tense historical moment, the inter-war era, so Winterbottom turns to an earlier filmic 31
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32 scene to generate his own creative play between fiction and document. The director 32
33 has in particular stated his admiration for early post-World War Two film-makers 33
34 such as Andrzej Wajda, Jean-Luc Goddard and Lindsay Anderson (McFarlane and 34
35 Williams 2009, 12). These directors shared, at least early on, a self-consciously 35
36 artificial realism: a mixing of film stocks, an unpredictable contrasting of visibly 36
37 ‘mobile’ camera shots, hand-held, or vehicle-moved, for instance; each is at times 37
38 improvisatory too, using non-professional actors, outdoor cityscape locations and 38
39 oblique storytelling techniques. Moving back further, Winterbottom’s film reflects 39
40 Roberto Rossellini’s ‘neorealist’ trilogy of the middle 1940s – Rome, Open City 40
41 (1945), Paisà (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1948). Both directors display an 41
42 intense awareness of locality and landscape, both record situations within which 42
43 ‘social actors’, as opposed to professional actors, respond to their surroundings, 43
44 and finally, both are engaged in an urgent search for a means to respond to, argue 44

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 ‘The Lived Moment’: New Aesthetics for Migrant Recollection 225

1 against and explore more deeply the drama of large-scale contemporary events 1
2 (McFarlane and Williams 2009, 31). 2
3 Yet while A Seventh Man and In This World use interposed section titles, 3
4 and while each cuts from the location of one key scene to the next along their 4
5 route, In This World has a less obviously schematic structure. Where Berger and 5
6 Mohr have ‘Departure’, ‘Work’ and ‘Return’ as the three section headings of their 6
7 account, Winterbottom uses place names to locate his series of ‘lived moments’. 7
8 Where Berger and Mohr create a disruptive collage of visual and textual material, 8
9 Winterbottom has his own vocabulary of disruptive devices: harsh, digital shots 9
10 of barren landscape precede a difficult negotiation with a border guard; a blurry 10
11 outdoor sequence is rendered with night-vision to express the danger and panic of 11
12 an illegal border crossing between Iran and Turkey. In one extraordinary scene, 12
13 light is all but abandoned in favour of shouts, bangs and increasingly desperate 13

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14 cries as the travellers are trapped in a cargo container. These devices are often 14
15 associated with moments of stress, fear or danger, especially when moving out 15
16 of one country and into another (Farrier 2008, 229–30). In addition, the sense of 16
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social constriction which increasingly burdens Jamal and Enayat as they travel
away from the world they know is signalled by a continual narrowing of physical
spaces. The two protagonists become physically and emotionally boxed-in as they
move from their relatively open refugee camp onto a succession of buses, pickup
trucks and lorries, dark concealed hiding places and railway undercarriages,
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22 backrooms and basements. 22
23 23
24 24
25 ‘The Lived Moment’ 25
26 26
27 One anecdote from Winterbottom captures his wider sense of how migrants 27
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28 can partly tell themselves rather than wholly be told by others. During the post- 28
29 production of In This World, Jamal, the story’s main protagonist and the film’s 29
30 main actor, returned from Pakistan to Britain, this time as a real refugee, to claim 30
31 official asylum status. Winterbottom describes editing the scene in the film where 31
32 Jamal leaves his family in Shamshatoo camp: 32
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33 33
34 Jamal was actually in the cutting room watching [the editing]. So by that point 34
35 he’d actually become the character in the film and didn’t know when he’d ever 35
36 see his brother again; didn’t know when he’d go back there, and it was one of the 36
37 strangest things to see the way in which the film that was supposed to be a fiction 37
38 based on reality had then become a reality itself. (Farrier 2008, 224) 38
39 39
40 This fluidity of circumstance and sense of possibility is not much present in 40
41 Berger and Mohr, but even in Winterbottom’s film, the portrayal of agency has 41
42 its limits. Enayat, after all, dies inside the shipping container which ought to have 42
43 taken him to Trieste. So, while it is possible to read In This World as an unusual 43
44 variation on the ‘road movie’, in which an appealing, cheeky protagonist travels 44

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 226 The Postcolonial Museum

1 with his companion through danger and adventure towards the final achievement 1
2 of success and manhood, the story is more complex. Within the larger structure of 2
3 the film, one action – border crossing – is constantly repeated in a succession of 3
4 episodes. After each crossing, Jamal and Enayat are left apparently closer to their 4
5 destination, yet they are still faced with the fear, danger and exhaustion of moving 5
6 forwards, still not at their final destination, still compelled to repeat the same 6
7 difficult task under slightly different conditions, each time with no apparent gain. 7
8 Likewise, in A Seventh Man political, economic and legal forces conspire against 8
9 the migrant so that his experience can be read only as tragedy. Since migrants 9
10 cannot articulate their own lives, Berger and Mohr have no need to quote their 10
11 words directly. They listen intently, but do not report in straightforward direct 11
12 speech what they hear. A Seventh Man disregards the ways in which speaking 12
13 a migrant journey can elicit new versions of the autobiographical self. It fails 13

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14 to acknowledge that by recycling, reworking and rethinking former events, the 14
15 migrant may consider not just how the past could have turned out differently, but 15
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also how a changed future might still be.

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What Berger and Winterbottom do suggest by their explorations of subjective
migratory experience is an alternative archive for cultural memory. This archive no
longer resides in the physical space of the museum, but in the imaginative space of
the audience; it exists in their sensations and thoughts responding to word/image
combinations on the page or to the movement of light on a screen. Such an archive
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21
22 is constituted by creating aesthetic experiences which allude more effectively 22
23 to the subjective sensations of the mobile displaced, by the accumulation of 23
24 precisely detailed, collective, ‘lived moments’ which are continually reinterpreted 24
25 in retrospect. Gathering and preserving this index of experiences – the act of 25
26 archiving – here means registering in the audience an interpretation of the 26
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27 destabilised self. Each entry in this archive answers questions like ‘How does 27
28 it feel to travel and live beyond the boundaries of a settled society?’ or ‘What 28
29 happens to migrants who become misplaced in international welfare and legal 29
30 systems?’ Where existing archival practices merely register objects or voices as 30
31 distant remnants, this ‘subjectivist’ memory system constitutes the postcolonial 31
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32 museum through aesthetic analysis. What Berger and Winterbottom finally register 32
33 is an inner sense of the mental, physical and geographical instabilities within the 33
34 spaces of otherness. What the postcolonial museum might seek in its imaginative 34
35 engagement with the heterotopic is a closer intellectual and aesthetic engagement 35
36 with ‘the choices of the underfed’. 36
37 The objections to Berger and Mohr’s vision of migrant experience are well 37
38 expressed by Salman Rushdie, who acknowledges the compassion and originality 38
39 of A Seventh Man, but is less convinced by its despondency: 39
40 40
41 To migrate is certainly to lose language and home, to be defined by others, to 41
42 become invisible or, even worse, a target; it is to experience deep changes and 42
43 wrenches in the soul. But the migrant is not simply transformed by his act; he 43
44 44

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 ‘The Lived Moment’: New Aesthetics for Migrant Recollection 227

1 also transforms his new world. Migrants may well become mutants, but it is out 1
2 of such hybridisation that newness can emerge. (Rushdie 1991, 210) 2
3 3
4 Nevertheless, Berger and Mohr’s achievement is substantial, and remains a 4
5 rich source of aesthetic strategies for the portrayal of migrant experience. By 5
6 visualising a common migrant ‘family’ of blood relatives, of experiences and of 6
7 continual recycled images, A Seventh Man creates a family life-story portrait, a 7
8 photographic aide-mémoire, a fictional history in snapshots, which is itself now 8
9 passed down across generations to re-make future lives. 9
10 10
11 11
12 References 12
13 13

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14 Abrams, Lynn. 2010. Oral History Theory. London: Routledge. 14
15 Bannet, Eve Tavor. 2011. Transatlantic Stories and the History of Reading 1720– 15
16 1810. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 16
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Berger, John and Jean Mohr. 1967. A Fortunate Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
——. [1975] 2010. A Seventh Man: A Book of Images and Words About the
Experience of Migrant Workers in Europe. London: Verso.
——. 1982. Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon.
Farrier, David. 2008. ‘The Journey is the Film is the Journey: Michael
17
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22 Winterbottom’s In This World’. Research in Drama Education 13(2): 223–32. 22
23 Leese, Peter, Beata Piatek and Izabela Curyllo-Klag. 2002. The British Migrant 23
24 Experience 1700–2000: An Anthology. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 24
25 McFarlane, Brian and Deane Williams. 2009. Michael Winterbottom. Manchester: 25
26 Manchester University Press. 26
27 Merrifield, Andy. 2012. John Berger. London: Reaktion. 27
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28 Papastergiadis, Nikos. 1993. Modernity in Exile: The Stranger in John Berger’s 28

29 Writing. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 29
30 Roberts, John. 1998. The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the 30
31 Everyday. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 31
32 Rushdie, Salman. 1991. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism. London: 32
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33 Granta/Penguin. 33
34 Winter, Jessica. 2010. ‘World in Motion’. In Michael Winterbottom: Interviews, 34
35 edited by Damon Smith. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 60–63. 35
36 36
37 37
38 38
39 39
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42 42
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 1 Chapter 18 1
2 2
3 Coding/Decoding the Archive 3
4 4
5 David Gauthier and Erin La Cour 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
10 Although the concept of the archive is ambiguous in its connotative multiplicity, 10
11 which obscures any singular consolidated theory, it is precisely the ambiguous 11
12 quality of the archive, and indeed archival production from inscription to output, 12
13 that is interesting to examine. What the archive is, what it produces and what its 13

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14 political and ideological ramifications are – all important areas of inquiry – lead on 14
15 to more all-embracing questions: what is the purpose of the archive, what do we 15
‘gain’ or ‘lose’ in archival practice, and what can it transform?
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On the one hand, the use of archiving machines has created a sense of cultural 17
‘loss’, outlined, for example, in Friedrich Kittler’s (1987) discussion of how the 18
advent of the gramophone made learning to read and play sheet music obsolete. 19
On the other hand, however, through the use of machines, we culturally ‘gain’ 20
what could not otherwise be archived, such as live recordings of Mississippi Delta 21
16
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22 blues musicians whose music was not, and could not in fact have been, properly 22
23 transcribed. But do these senses of ‘loss’ and ‘gain’ merely reveal a nostalgic 23
24 folklorisation of culture – or isn’t the archive always mediated, and thereby, as 24
25 Jacques Derrida has noted, ‘produces as much as it records the event’ (Derrida 25
26 1996, 17)? Recent discourse on archiving machines has suggested that the 26
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27 ‘consignation’ and authority of the institutionalised archive can be undermined, for 27

28 example, by open-source archiving systems designed to suit the needs of under- 28
29 represented cultures, and through digital memory that, in its total recall, levels 29
30 predetermined hierarchies and obscures the value assigned to cultural objects. 30
31 Through an examination of the materiality of archiving machines, how and what 31
they code and decode, we aim to critically evaluate the supposition that archiving 32
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32
33 machines can lead to a means of performing the interpretation of archival material 33
34 that is more dynamic than institutional discourse. 34
35 Asserted to be anarchival in their ‘unruliness’, archiving machines have been 35
36 promoted as capable of actively processing archival storage systems, allowing 36
37 for the creation of new materialities, new classifications, and thereby new 37
38 perspectives on subjectivity through the objectivity of machines. But do archiving 38
39 machines actually work as tools to ‘get rid of [a] political “double bind” which is 39
40 the simultaneous individualisation and totalization of modern power structures … 40
41 to promote new forms of subjectivity through refusal of this kind of individuality 41
42 which has been imposed on us for several centuries’ (Foucault 1982, 216)? Because 42
43 machines are based on systems of control and representation, we argue that their 43
44 ability to disorder, reorder and/or produce archival material – while certainly 44

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1 disruptive to previous manifestations of institutional archival order – merely leads 1

2 to processes of re-territorialisation in producing new subjectivities, and therefore 2
3 returns to the same ‘political double bind’. 3
4 Our aim, therefore, is to uncover these subjects by means of problematising 4
5 their production. Rather than examining the machine’s essence from its material 5
6 or informational foundation alone – that is, its substance – we look instead at 6
7 the process of ‘errors’ as revealing and exposing the problematic aspects of 7
8 computational machines. We posit that by revealing the political ramifications 8
9 of the archive, the problematic event of the technological ‘error’ allows for a 9
10 performative transformation of the archive. Therefore, we assert that ‘errors’ 10
11 serve as ontological ground from which the subjectivity imposed upon us by 11
12 the medium of the archive can be undermined, which can lend an innovative 12
13 approach to practical applications in artistic and archival research and practice. 13

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In order to discuss the workings of the archive, we find it useful to examine
the intersection between Jacques Derrida’s writings on the archive and Michel
Foucault’s critique of institutions. Although Foucault is obviously associated with
his critique of the archive, we would like to focus attention on where his critique of
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22 institutions is in accordance with Derrida’s writings on the archive. This point of 22
23 overlap between the two is where we find the most productive definition, because 23
24 what we are concerned with exploring is the performative aspect of the archive – 24
25 that is, both what it benignly seeks to accomplish and how it is used to mediate 25
26 cultural memory across various sites. 26
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27 Foucault argues that the archive does not work as ‘the sum of all the texts 27
28 that a culture has kept upon its person as documents attesting to its own past, or 28
29 as evidence of a continuing identity’, including its institutional collections and 29
30 their discourses of remembrance (Foucault 1989, 145). Indeed, though he offers an 30
31 extensive critique of institutions, he maintains a separation between such systems 31
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32 and the archive. He writes: 32

33 33
34 Instead of seeing, on the great mythical book of history, lines of words that translate 34
35 in visible characters thoughts that were formed in some other time and place, we 35
36 have in the density of discursive practices, systems that establish statements as 36
37 events (with their own conditions and domain of appearance) and things (with 37
38 their own possibility and field of use). They are all these systems of statements 38
39 (whether events or things) that I propose to call archive. (Foucault 1989, 145) 39
40 40
41 In his discussion of the archive, Derrida starts from a different premise. For him, 41
42 the archive carries with it its historical connotation of arkhé, which as he reminds 42
43 us ‘names at once the commencement and the commandment’ (Derrida 1996, 1). 43
44 Although, to some extent, Derrida is in agreement with Foucault that the archive 44

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 Coding/Decoding the Archive 231

1 can never represent the sum of culture, he nevertheless asserts that ‘the concept 1
2 of the archive shelters in itself, of course, this memory of the name arkhé. But 2
3 it also shelters itself from this memory which it shelters: which comes down to 3
4 saying also that it forgets it’ (Derrida 1996, 3). 4
5 Derrida, then, can be seen as offering an eclipse of Foucault’s idea: while for 5
6 the latter the archive can only collect statements, not judgements, for Derrida the 6
7 archive is still, even if forgetfully so, power-laden through its institutionalisation. 7
8 He writes: 8
9 9
10 A science of the archive must include the theory of this institutionalization, that 10
11 is to say, the theory both of the law which begins by inscribing itself there and 11
12 of the right which authorizes it. This right imposes or supposes a bundle of 12
13 limits which have a history, a deconstructable history …. This deconstruction 13

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14 concerns, as always, the institution of limits declared to be insurmountable. 14
15 (Derrida 1996, 4) 15
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Pointedly, for Derrida, the archive speaks to both how it is formulated and
how it is mediated. He writes: ‘At the intersection of the topological and the
nomological, of the place and the law, of the substrate and the authority, a scene
of domiciliation becomes at once visible and invisible’ (Derrida 1996, 3). Like
the arkhé, institutions become scenes of the domiciliation of the archive, both
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22 visible and invisible, and actively seeking out homogeneity to maintain order 22
23 and authority. For Derrida, then, the action of the archive, what comes out of 23
24 the (incomplete, forgetful) collection, has very real societal applications and 24
25 political implications in its working ‘a priori against itself’ (Derrida 1996, 12). 25
26 While, again, Foucault does not consider institutions as such to be manifestations 26
27 of the archive, his critique of them raises similar concerns to Derrida’s writings 27
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28 on archival power. Derrida’s assertion that the hypomnesic nature of the archive 28
29 ‘assures the possibility of memorization, of repetition, of reproduction, or of 29
30 reimpression’, which works to ensure forgetfulness and the destruction of the 30
31 intention of the archive, directly speaks to Foucault’s concerns about institutions. 31
32 Foucault writes: 32
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33 33
34 The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of 34
35 institutions which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them 35
36 in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself 36
37 obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight them. (Foucault 37
38 and Chomsky 2006, 41) 38
39 39
40 For Foucault, the workings of institutions belie any neutrality they claim to have, 40
41 much in the same manner as Derrida’s sites of archival power; as neither ‘memory 41
42 [n]or anamnesis as spontaneous, alive and internal experience’, the archive in 42
43 its exteriority, in its institutionalisation, is always orchestrated and orchestrates’ 43
44 (Derrida 1996, 11). 44

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 232 The Postcolonial Museum

1 Towards an Anarchive: The Mediation of Archiving Machines 1

2 2
3 As scenes of domiciliation of the archive, museums and libraries devoted to cultural 3
4 heritage are mediators of unordered archival material, sequencing, recomposing 4
5 and forming subjects and objects in small aggregates of displays following specific 5
6 categories and narratives – epochs, genres, techniques and so on Following the 6
7 principles of archiving, these cultural institutions identify, classify and unify 7
8 cultural objects and consign them to their archive, generally ‘coordinat[ing] a 8
9 single corpus, in a system or a synchrony in which all the elements articulate the 9
10 unity of an ideal configuration’ (Derrida 1996, 17). Cultural discourse is thereby 10
11 segmented into logical quantities, divided into chapters and rooms, recombined 11
12 into books and exhibitions, and consolidated as collections through an institutional 12
13 operation of differentiation and ordering of the entropic archive which represents 13

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14 it as an evidentially based, historically sound whole. 14
15 While Foucault can be seen as the last historian and first anthropologist, his 15
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concept of épistémè created a rupture in this homogeneous view of the archive.
Épistémè made visible the archive’s design and fractured the context of history
into discrete, isolated islands of loosely coupled statements (events and objects)
which lay themselves open to being recomposed and reformulated. As Arjun
Appadurai notes: ‘Foucault destroyed the innocence of the archive and forced us
to ask about the designs through which all traces are produced …. [H]e showed
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22 that all evidence was born in some sort of nostalgic gaze’ (Appadurai 2003, 16). 22
23 Indeed, épistémè questions the normalising practices of the historian’s evidential 23
24 and linear-narrative view, underlining that it is merely institutional discourse 24
25 that is homogenous, not the archive itself – that the archive is not a form, but an 25
26 entropic medium. 26
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27 Archiving machines speak to this concept of the archive. While their sequencing, 27
28 classification, combination and ordering are similar to those of institutions, they 28
29 use different taxonomies and means of coding/decoding objects and subjects. 29
30 Rather than operating solely at the level of discourse, they operate at the level of 30
31 medium; their archival (re)mediation is less about history, narrative and evidence 31
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32 than it is about memory, mnemonics and information. As Wolfgang Ernst notes: 32

33 33
34 For mechanical storage as place of memory all data is of equal significance – 34
35 unlike the literary perpetuation of spontaneous recollection in Marcel Proust’s À 35
36 la recherche du temps perdu. For this Goethe employed the archivist’s technical 36
37 term of Repertorium: ‘a listing compiled in terms of general and special 37
38 headings, and all kinds of letters and numbers’. A cybernetics of storage and 38
39 an administrative infrastructure come into play prior to any cultural memory. 39
40 (Ernst 2005, 97) 40
41 41
42 The referentiality of the archival medium is posited as constituting the archive’s 42
43 substrate, its memory, levelling all elements it holds as a whole. Nowadays, 43
44 the anthropological lens of recollection and remembrance is being upset by the 44

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1 archaeological lens of memory, which is bolstered by and fused with the power 1
2 of machines. Through techno-logic, we are able to undermine past archival 2
3 structures, such as those found in institutional discourse, by means of reordering 3
4 the systems upon which they are built. The homogeneity of the archive of the past 4
5 – built on a system of cultural capital – infused decisions that led to differentiation 5
6 from inscription to interpretation to enacted power – can be upset by the technical 6
7 ability of machines. 7
8 Because machines work on the level of mnemonics and media, they can disorder 8
9 what seems to be ordered in previous manifestations of the archive; for example, 9
10 through algorithmic deconstruction of literary texts into bags of words, current 10
11 world literature analysis is able to extract latent semantics from heterogeneous sets 11
12 of corpora which ‘focus on units that are much smaller or much larger than the 12
13 text: devices, themes, tropes – or genres and systems’ (Moretti 2000, 57). Unlike 13

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14 passive documents, digital archives never stay put, being necessarily reproducible, 14
15 transferable and dynamically indexable. 15
16 This anarchival unruliness of machines reveals a different perspective on 16
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archival material; freed from narrative historical discourses of past archival
systems, machines exemplify what Friedrich Kittler has called a ‘technical
differentiation of optics, acoustics, and writing’ that creates ‘a clean division
between matter and information’ (Kittler 1987, 115). On this division, he notes:
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22 In order to optimize writing for machines, it must no longer be dreamt of as an 22
23 expression of individuals or as a trace of bodies. The forms, differences, and 23
24 frequencies of letters have to be reduced to formulas. So-called man becomes 24
25 physiology on the one hand and information technology on the other. (Kittler 25
26 1987, 115) 26
27 27
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28 The birth of this so-called man, physiologically addressed through formulas and 28
29 information technology, has consequences for the conventional philological study 29
30 of narrative. Not only are the linear forms of narrative transformed by technology, 30
31 but the message transmitted through media channels stops being one of man per se, 31
32 and becomes rather one of the medium itself; as Walter Benjamin has pointed out, 32
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33 media renders storytelling dubious (Ernst 2002, 626). Since current information 33
34 technologies are themselves capable of producing symbolic forms (copy, paste, 34
35 record, cypher, decypher, transform, combine, transmit and so on), narrativity is 35
36 eliminated and the aesthetic performativity of the medium replaces the story. 36
37 However, while this ability of machines reveals that the homogeneity of 37
38 a narrative historical perspective of the archive is faulty, it ultimately creates 38
39 a new system of order and representation. Since the symbolic is regarded as 39
40 information, both man and apparatuses are directly addressed by the signifier – the 40
41 medium – or in other words, both are intended to be programmed (Kittler 1987, 41
42 116). Thus, even as the anarchival unruliness of machines upsets the narrative 42
43 weft of the archive, it none the less also points to a new type of control, order 43
44 and representation, where recollection is replaced by mechanical memory, ethics 44

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 234 The Postcolonial Museum

1 is transformed into statistics and the unconscious becomes stochastic neural 1

2 networks. The inscription of algorithmic programs and data-flow manipulation 2
3 is the new order that is authorised in the archive and culture at large. In this way, 3
4 though machines promote a new sense of subjectivity, they are still entrenched 4
5 in institutional discourse, and therefore point to a process of re-territorialisation 5
6 rather than a refusal of the ‘political double bind’. In his discussion of Foucault’s 6
7 Les mots et les choses, Hal Foster notes that the aspect of collage brought about 7
8 by such systems, while it liberates us from previous narrative structures, also 8
9 still constrains us: 9
10 10
11 After photographic reproduction the museum was not so bound by walls, but 11
12 it was bordered by style. What is the edge of the archive without museums? 12
13 Perhaps its limit takes the form of an illusion – of a superficial mobility of signs 13

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14 that covers a profound stasis of system. Perhaps the library has returned, but as 14
15 a container in which other orders are melted down, then set in deep freeze. An 15
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entropic archive, a new Alexandria. (Foster 1996, 116)

Indeed, rather than truly disrupting past systems of the archive, machines are 18
only able to manipulate what is already present in the archive, disordering, 19
reordering and/or producing from a limited set of material. Because of this, while 20
new subjectivities can be explored, machine technology ultimately leads back to 21
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22 the same problematics of order and stasis. In this light, the discursive work of 22
23 machines is ultimately no more neutral in its mediation of archival material and 23
24 subjects than traditional narrative historical archiving practices. 24
25 25
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27 Transforming the Archive: The Breakdown of Representation in ‘Errors’ 27

28 28
29 The recurrent issue of order and stasis in the archive can be critically investigated 29
30 through an inquiry into the system of representation of machines and how 30
31 they mediate our understanding of the archive. In examining the automatic 31
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32 negentropic processes that are necessarily introduced by machine technology, 32

33 we can uncover the performative aspect of the archive introduced through 33
34 technological ‘errors’. 34
35 Paul Virilio asserts that the accident, ‘the hidden face of technical progress’ 35
36 as he calls it, ‘in a certain way, is a miracle in reverse. It reveals something 36
37 absolutely necessary to knowledge’ (Virilio and Lotringer 2005, 63). An 37
38 ‘accident’ (or ‘error’ or ‘glitch’) is a problematic event, in the Deleuzian sense, 38
39 from which deduction and thus knowledge ‘moves from the problem to the ideal 39
40 accidents and events that condition the problem and form the cases that resolve 40
41 it. ‘The event by itself’, writes Deleuze, ‘is problematic and problematizing’ 41
42 (Deleuze, quoted in Smith 2003, 415). We posit that in this way ‘errors’ not only 42
43 reveal the system of the machine, but can also be seen as confrontational to the 43
44 order and stasis of archival systems. 44

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38 Figure 18.1 Alex M. Lee, ‘I dropped my book and now I can’t read my 38
39 book’, 2012. Black and white photograph of a damaged Kindle 39
40 e-reader. Reproduced courtesy of the artist 40
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 236 The Postcolonial Museum

1 In order to elaborate on this ability of ‘errors’, we must first understand two 1

2 foundational concepts of cybernetic machines from which information is defined 2
3 and thus automatic differentiation operates. The first is entropy, the measure of 3
4 disorder of a system, and the second is negentropy, the measure of order of a 4
5 system. As the father of cybernetics Norbert Wiener explained: ‘Just as the 5
6 amount of information in a system is a measure of its degree of organization, so 6
7 the entropy of a system is a measure of its degree of disorganization; and the one 7
8 is simply the negative of the other’ (Wiener 1948, 18–19). In the light of these 8
9 fundamental principles of information theory, cybernetic machines are by nature 9
10 negentropic. They order the organic and inorganic in a highly controlled, complex 10
11 and structured system tending towards self-conditioned stability. 11
12 In his early work, Wiener focused on the study of effective messages of 12
13 control as constituting the science of cybernetics, precisely because he assumed 13

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14 that self-regulating systems tend towards entropy. Using quantisation thresholds, 14
15 systems of tolerances and control feedback, the cybernetic machine structures 15
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and discards chaos, instituting a normalisation of the organic and inorganic in
its quest for producing and sustaining negentropy. A problematic event shows a
system in a state of entropy, or more precisely, the ‘error’ shows the process of
transition from a state of negentropy to a state of entropy. In so doing, it exposes
the fundamental process-oriented nature of a cybernetic system – that is, control
based on information representations. ‘Errors’ are, technically speaking, deviation
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22 processes: deviation from the norm or centre, a control hiccup, a derailment off 22
23 the tracks of order. 23
24 These grounding principles of cybernetics can be used to direct our 24
25 understanding of the machine’s system of representation, based on differentiation 25
26 of signals of entropy vis-à-vis signals of negentropy, which culminates in 26
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27 determining information. About the totalising operations of representation, 27

28 Deleuze writes: 28
29 29
30 This operation is carried out by a method which ensures a monocentricity of all 30
31 the possible centres of finite representation, a convergence of all the finite points 31
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32 of view of representation. This operation expresses sufficient reason. The latter 32

33 is not identity but, rather, the means of subordinating to the identical and the 33
34 other requirements of representation that part of difference which escaped them 34
35 in the first sense. (Deleuze 2004, 342–3) 35
36 36
37 Thus all computational events, whether fluctuating voltages entering a computer 37
38 processor, rays of visible light entering a camera or simply data streams received 38
39 from a network, are claims which need to be quantified through a system of 39
40 thresholds, made discrete and ordered according to the machine’s internal 40
41 system of representation, its grounding principles. Deleuze writes about 41
42 these representational events or claims: ‘the object of the claim (the quality, 42
43 difference) finds itself placed in a circle; the arcs of the circle are distinguished 43
44 to the extent that the ground establishes moments of stasis within qualitative 44

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 Coding/Decoding the Archive 237

1 becoming, stoppages in between the two extremes of more and less’ (Deleuze 1
2 2004, 343). The cybernetic machine institutes this circle where events (or 2
3 ‘inputs’) are evaluated and differentiated. All sorts of causes (voltages, currents, 3
4 electromagnetic waveforms and so on) are normalised in order to produce 4
5 sequences of well-known effects, translated into discrete and finite sets of 5
6 symbols, which in turn are rendered as information (order) or discarded as noise 6
7 (disorder): ‘Difference is thought of here in terms of the principle of Sameness 7
8 and the condition of resemblance rather than as pure difference – which is the 8
9 quality of the event’ (Deleuze 2004, 342). In this light, representations are an 9
10 illusion, subordinating the difference of the causes to the resemblance of the 10
11 effects. 11
12 In his book Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Vilém Flusser illustrates 12
13 this assimilation by positing that programs are modelled on a Cartesian model of 13

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14 thought. He explains: 14
15 15
16 According to Descartes thought consists of clear and distinct elements (concepts) 16
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that are combined in the thought process like beads on an abacus, in which every
concept signifies a point in the extended world out there. If every point could
be assigned a concept, then thought would be omniscient and at the same time
omnipotent. For thought processes would then symbolically direct processes out
there. (Flusser 2005, 67)
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23 Programs simulate Cartesian thought as they attempt to create a universe where 23
24 concepts are assigned to every possible and probable point in the extended world 24
25 out there. In his discussion of the photographic apparatus and its universe, Flusser 25
26 continues: 26
27 27
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28 To every photograph there corresponds a clear and distinct element in the camera 28
29 program. Every photograph thereby corresponds to a specific combination of 29
30 elements in programs. Thanks to this bi-univocal relationship between universe 30
31 and program, in which a photograph corresponds to every point in the program 31
32 and a point in the program to every photograph, cameras are omniscient and 32
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33 omnipotent in the photographic universe. (Flusser 2005, 68) 33

34 34
35 However, this bi-univocality of program and universe directs a reversal in the 35
36 vectors of significance. He notes: ‘the program does not signify the photograph, the 36
37 photograph signifies the elements of the program (concepts)’ (Flusser 2005, 68). 37
38 In other words, a photograph does not represent the ‘world-out-there’ but rather 38
39 the ‘world-in-there’ – it is a coded simulation of reality based on the program’s 39
40 own system of representation. As Deleuze and Guattari remind us: ‘simulation 40
41 does not replace reality … but rather it appropriates reality in the operation of 41
42 despotic overcoding, it produces reality on the new full body that replaces the 42
43 earth. It expresses the appropriation and production of the real by a quasi-cause’ 43
44 (Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 228). 44

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 238 The Postcolonial Museum

1 By derailing the program’s system of representation, a problematic event 1

2 reveals this over-coding of simulation and simulacrum, thereby critically positing 2
3 the vector of significance reversal between the ‘world-out-there’ and the ‘world- 3
4 in-there’. What we see through ‘errors’ is a struggle of the ‘world-in-there’, the 4
5 fundamental forces of divergence and de-centring of entropy over designed circuits 5
6 and automatic logic, plunging the event of such phenomena into ‘a groundlessness 6
7 … which resists all forms and cannot be represented’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 7
8 334). ‘Errors’ as a process determine the indeterminate: 8
9 9
10 Something of the ground rises to the surface, without assuming any form but, 10
11 rather, insinuating itself between the forms; a formless base, an autonomous 11
12 and faceless existence. This ground which is now on the surface is called depth 12
13 or groundlessness. Conversely, when they are reflected in it, forms decompose, 13

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14 every model breaks down and all faces perish, leaving only the abstract line as 14
15 the determination absolutely adequate to the indeterminate, just as the flash of 15
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lightning is equal to the night, acid equal to the base, and distinction adequate to
obscurity as a whole: monstrosity. (A determination which is not opposed to the
indeterminate and does not limit it). (Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 344–5)

As pure difference, the quality of the problematic event exposes the aim of
archival systems, whether narrative historical or mediatic, to subjugate and make
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22 subject to; ‘errors’ reveal that these subjectivities, the hidden face of mediation, 22
23 operate at the level of the Same and the Similar. In their fragmenting of the 23
24 principle of Sameness and the condition of resemblance, ‘errors’ present the 24
25 de-centring of order and stasis, and are thereby able to instantiate Difference as 25
26 depth of the indeterminate. 26
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27 27
28 28
29 Conclusion 29
30 30
31 In the postcolonial condition, the museum as purveyor of cultural memory and 31
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32 promoter of subjectivities has had to be critically evaluated. The opening up of 32

33 museums to account for repressed cultures, objects and discourses has moved 33
34 forward to consider how such accounts may be still – or even further – obscured 34
35 in their new-found representation. From attempts to allow members of marginal 35
36 communities to speak of and for themselves, to allow artists and curators playing 36
37 with the medium of the museum to demonstrate its hierarchical and fragmentary 37
38 nature, the concept of the museum is in a state of dynamic change, forced to 38
39 constantly rethink its practices of ‘othering’. 39
40 As we have argued throughout this chapter, the ‘error’ problematises the 40
41 production of subjectivities in archiving machines. As a breakdown of control, 41
42 the ‘error’ exposes the machine’s regulatory system of order and stasis, thereby 42
43 freeing us from the distortions of representation such systems create. In this 43
44 context, ‘errors’ offer a productive instability that resonates with the postcolonial 44

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1 critique of a preceding order. They offer a way out of the ever-present ‘othering’ 1
2 inscribed in archival practice, ultimately allowing for a transformation of our 2
3 perception of the museum. 3
4 4
5 5
6 References 6
7 7
8 Appadurai, Arjun. 2003. ‘Archive and Aspiration’. In Information is Alive: Art 8
9 and Theory on Archiving and Retrieving Data, edited by Joke Brouwer and 9
10 Arjen Mulder. Rotterdam: V2, 14–25. 10
11 Deleuze, Gilles. 2003. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester and Charles 11
12 Stivale. London: Continuum. 12
13 ——. 2004. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. London: 13

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14 Continuum. 14
15 —— and Félix Guattari. 2004. Anti-Oedipus. Translated by Helen Lane, Mark 15
16 Seem and Robert Hurley. London: Continuum. 16
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Derrida, Jacques. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Translated by Eric
Prenowitz. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Ernst, Wolfgang. 2002. ‘Between Real Time and Memory on Demand: Reflections
on/of Television’. South Atlantic Quarterly 101(3): 625–37.
——. 2005. ‘Art of the Archive.’ In KünstlerArchiv: Neue Werke zu historischen
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22 Beständen, edited by Helen Adkins. Cologne: Walter König, 93–101. 22
23 Flusser, Vilém. 2005. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. Translated by Martin 23
24 Chalmers. London: Reaktion Books. 24
25 Foster, Hal. 1996. ‘The Archive Without Museums’. October 77: 97–119. 25
26 Foucault, Michel. 1982. ‘The Subject and Power’. In Michel Foucault: Beyond 26
27 Structuralism and Hermeneutics, edited by Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. 27
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28 Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 208–26. 28

29 ——. 1989. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by Alan Sheridan Smith. 29
30 London: Routledge. 30
31 —— and Noam Chomsky. 2006. The Chomsky–Foucault Debate: On Human 31
32 Nature. New York: New Press. 32
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33 Kittler, Friedrich. 1987. ‘Gramophone, Film, Typewriter’. Translated by Dorothea 33

34 Von Mücke and Philippe L. Similon. October 41: 101–18. 34
35 Moretti, Franco. 2000. ‘Conjectures on World Literature’. New Left Review 1: 35
36 54–68. 36
37 Smith, Daniel W. 2003. ‘Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities: Badiou 37
38 and Deleuze Revisited’. Southern Journal of Philosophy 41(3): 411–49. 38
39 Virilio, Paul and Sylvère Lotringer. 2005. The Accident of Art. New York: 39
40 Semiotext(e). 40
41 Wiener, Norbert. 1948. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the 41
42 Animal and the Machine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 42
43 43
44 44

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 1 1
2 Afterword: After the Museum 2
3 3
4 Iain Chambers 4
5 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 As the MeLa research project obviously draws on a series of interdisciplinary 9
10 and transnational approaches in elaborating its critical perspectives, it was highly 10
11 fitting that the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ should have hosted the conference 11
12 The Postcolonial Museum: The Pressures of Memory, the Bodies of History. The 12
13 history and development of ‘L’Orientale’, both in terms of its research and teaching 13

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14 programmes, have been continually shaped by questions of transcultural research 14
15 and the accompanying need to develop interdisciplinary approaches in registering 15
the diverse and complex formation of the modern world. Here the past, as a linguistic,
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cultural and historical archive, has consistently been researched in proposing an
altogether more critical sense of the present. Looking elsewhere towards extra-
European worlds, particularly in Africa and Asia, ‘L’Orientale’ has consistently
sought to establish its critical and academic presence on the threshold between a
European inheritance and extra-European histories, cultures and languages.
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22 The work that has been produced in this university and which feeds into the 22
23 MeLa project encourages us to consider how Europe is placed on an altogether 23
24 more extensive map: one that is central to its making, but which also exceeds its 24
25 geographical and cultural confines. This emerging critical space – interdisciplinary? 25
26 transnational? postcolonial? – is surely what is common to ‘L’Orientale’ and 26
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27 the ongoing research and concerns of the chapters presented here. It is not by 27
28 chance that probably the first international conference in Italy on postcolonialism 28
29 – The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons – was held at 29
30 ‘L’Orientale’ two decades ago. 30
31 The rites and rituals of the archival procedures and architectural organisation 31
of the museum produce texts, documents, objects, experiences that are identified,
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32 32
33 classified, catalogued, explained and interpreted in regimes of knowledge, power 33
34 and truth. The volume Cultural Memory, Migrating Modernities and Museum 34
35 Practices produced by the MeLa research group in Naples proposed a preliminary 35
36 critical survey of such historical and cultural procedures.1 36
37 Extending these considerations, I wish very briefly to touch here on two 37
38 dimensions; the first one is captured in these words from Irit Rogoff: 38
39 39
40 The old boundaries between making and theorising, historicising and displaying, 40
41 criticising and affirming have long been eroded. Artistic practice is being 41
42 42
43 1 Available online at http://www.mela-project.eu/publications/949 (accessed 10 43
44 November 2013). 44

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 242 The Postcolonial Museum

1 acknowledged as the production of knowledge and theoretical and curatorial 1

2 endeavours have taken on a far more experimental and inventive dimension, 2
3 both existing in the realm of potentiality and possibility rather than that of 3
4 exclusively material production. (Rogoff 2003) 4
5 5
6 To this, I wish to add this reflection from Angela Dimitrakaki: 6
7 7
8 Representation is an ontological features of the exhibition, which acquires 8
9 sharper contours in cases of multicultural and multiethnic shows. But as 9
10 ‘authentic’ art today tends to be biopolitical, affective and about knowing rather 10
11 than representing the social, we are also forced to ask: is the exhibition the 11
12 optimal mode of ‘our’ encounter with art? (Dimitrakaki 2012) 12
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14 Without comment, I wish now simply to bring in the second dimension. This 14
15 consists in considering the context of extra-European temporalities and spaces. 15
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Here the modern museum, as a European-derived modality of knowledge and
cultural power, has to register the highly charged pertinence of excluded times and
spaces to the making of modernity, particularly in the harsh light of the intertwined
centralities of colonialism, imperialism and global migrations. At this point, the
museum becomes another space: a heterotopia, an unsuspected site for the critical
diagnoses of the modernity it seeks to exhibit and explain.
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22 The community of time – that is, the seemingly shared time of the narration 22
23 of the European nation – is here interrupted when other times and constellations 23
24 of belonging enter the museum. The purpose of the conference leading to this 24
25 book was to propose a collective investigation and discussion of this emerging 25
26 space and its critical impact on the museum yet to come. All of this, as Achille 26
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27 Mbembe reminds us, is to transform the archive from a collection of seemingly 27

28 past affairs and dead matters into a series of vital procedures – that is, into an 28
29 exercise of living powers and possibilities.2 Here the past refuses to pass, it insists 29
30 on its right to return and to interrogate and ghost the present: this is the troubling 30
31 debris of the past that exceeds the museum that historically sought to systematise, 31
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32 pacify and ultimately silence this inheritance; in the end, this meant to cancel its 32
33 contemporary pertinence. 33
34 What emerged from two intense days of papers and discussion, and hopefully 34
35 resonates in the writings in this volume, are a series of prospects that, orbiting 35
36 around the power of curating and the curating of power, pose how, why and 36
37 where to interrupt and disturb such a circular, self-affirming logic. The seemingly 37
38 flat plane of capital and cultural reproduction is hypothetically confronted with 38
39 multiple scales of belonging and their mixtures of acceptance, resistance and 39
40 40
41 2 Achille Mbembe, After Post-colonialism: Transnationalism or Essentialism? – Part 41
42 2, video lecture at Tate Modern, London, 1 June 2010, http://www.tate.org.uk/context- 42
43 comment/video/after-post-colonialism-transnationalism-or-essentialism-part-2 (accessed 43
44 14 April 2013). 44

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 Afterword: After the Museum 243

1 refusal. Modernity is not as flat as a map. In a historical moment when all is 1

2 increasingly monitored – from the local and the city to the region and the nation 2
3 – we have also to acknowledge that not all is captured and netted by capitalist 3
4 cultural surveillance. If migrants crossing the field of vision most immediately 4
5 produce an interrogative shadow, there are also many other, less tangible, manners 5
6 of deviating and re-working the logic that assumes all can be screwed into place. 6
7 Resistance to the present neo-liberal phase of capitalist accumulation, played out 7
8 in multiples scenes and localities, operates with a heterogeneity that consistently 8
9 challenges the seriality and historicism of the existing curatorial economy. 9
10 If the modern curator recognises in this space an ethical interrogation, how 10
11 are these different powers and potentials to be registered? The ‘incurable images’ 11
12 (Elhaik, Chapter 12 of this volume) and the incurable wounds and killing fields of 12
13 modernity (Mbembe 2001) disrupt the ‘neutral’ ethnographic masquerade of the 13

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14 curatorial operation. If objects, histories, cultures, people were once wrenched out 14
15 of their context in order to be put on display and exhibited as European knowledge, 15
16 today this has to be unwound from its colonial premises and handed back to the 16
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world it once presumed to define and own. In the sharp light of the gallery space
and the illuminated caption, can the impossibility of a healing be exposed? Can the
modern museum house what amounts to a historical and ontological cut when its
collection and criteria are re-routed through a radically diverse accounting of time
and space? Beyond mere adjustment and modification, the museum as a critical
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22 space needs to become something more, something else. 22
23 To propose a postcolonial museum is therefore to cultivate a historical, cultural 23
24 and ontological wound. It is, as Ranjana Khanna (2007) argues, a cut that remains 24
25 incurable. This is to entertain an economy of rupture and becoming that bleeds 25
26 into the present (Elhaik). Here ‘difficult heritages’ (Macdonald 2007; Gravano, 26
27 Chapter 8 of this volume) can never be fully accommodated.3 Despite our 27
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28 resistance, they insist with the demand for a response, not a resolution. Opening 28
29 up holes in time produce spaces in which re-membering resonates precisely with 29
30 what the institutional archive and its memories cannot house. Between the absolute 30
31 concentration of the Occidental museum, rendering the world transparent to its will, 31
32 and the complete diffusion of the intangible there emerge other horizons of sense. 32
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33 The museum, as a physical and metaphysical site of memory, ultimately poses the 33
34 interrogation of the very nature of the discursive organisation of knowledge. 34
35 The deliberate undoing of any liberal understanding of belonging as 35
36 a property secured in the dark archive of the mausoleum-museum raises the 36
37 question of the body politic that is infected (Rahman, Chapter 5 of this volume), 37
38 and inhabited by uncanny ghosts that dismantle the world and reassemble it from 38
39 another perspective. Operating with this critical fever, while striving towards a 39
40 more collective, democratic archive (Berger and Mohr 2010; Leese, Chapter 40
41 41
42 3  The notion of ‘difficult heritage’ was introduced by Sharon Macdonald at the 42
43 International Committee for Museums and Collections of Archaeology and History Annual 43
44 Conference in 2007. 44

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 244 The Postcolonial Museum

1 17 of this volume), the museum becomes a practice, an event. As a suspended 1

2 interrogation, the museum can no longer be claimed by a singular history or 2
3 culture. This leads to a wisdom that comes from losing one’s original mind 3
4 and embarking on other routes, proposing a reasoning that is irreducible to the 4
5 tyranny of a unique rationalism. 5
6 Just to consider how ‘objects’ might belong both to the former colonised as well 6
7 as to the colonising power is to delve into questions of property and ownership that 7
8 are completely over-determined by Occidental jurisdiction and legal practices. In 8
9 brief, it is to touch the heart of a political economy that a priori frames the power 9
10 of the museum as an Occidental institution. As Françoise Vergès explores the issue, 10
11 the defeat of the formerly colonised and contemporary subaltern nevertheless can 11
12 create lines of flight towards archives without objects to be claimed and possessed. 12
13 Unexpected entanglements around spaces that are simultaneously geo-physical, 13

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14 cultural and historical – the Indian Ocean and the project for a museum on the island 14
15 of Réunion, for example – produce a multi-temporal palimpsest. Working with local 15
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coordinates, and with a map that does not simply emerge from below, or from the
ground up, but is already suspended in multiple temporalities, histories and cultural
fluxes and flows, is to step outside the linearity of both the Euro-museum and the
ethnographic confines of an ‘authentic’ local folk culture. This means refusing the
linearity of ‘progress’, and abandoning futile attempts to ‘catch up’ with modernity.
It means proposing another cultural matrix in which ‘absence is not a lack’ (Vergès,
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22 Chapter 1 of this volume). Absence, not as a lack, but as an interrogation, produces 22
23 a slash in the temporal-spatial coordinates of an imposed History. 23
24 Then there is the indifference of the site and the setting. The humanist paradigm 24
25 can be refused by responding to other measures drawn from the climate, the soil, 25
26 the chemistry of life, that refuse to be readily indexed and mastered. This leads 26
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27 to critical reflection on the limitless drive of capitalism and colonialism when 27

28 South–South affinities break-up the North–South links. To refuse to be bonded 28
29 in a ‘victimhood’ imposed by the predatory economy that carries the name of 29
30 Occidental humanism is to take life beyond anthropomorphism into another 30
31 location, beyond representation and a subject-centred ontology (Biemann, Chapter 31
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32 16 of this volume). 32
33 On this threshold, we recognise the signal of the limits of representation and 33
34 the announcement of the post-human (Gauthier and La Cour, Chapter 18 of this 34
35 volume). This is an ecology of matter that matters. From personal machinery to 35
36 the open and frayed networked fabric of the planet, we are pushed beyond the 36
37 merely technical and its humanist intent. Collecting errors as a counter-image of 37
38 our will to power provokes other practices that challenge the assumed algorithms 38
39 of our lives. Dismantling history and exposing it to the infections of the world 39
40 is to undo the Kantian pact that guarantees the sovereignty of the Occidental 40
41 subject and the critical distance between a stable, accumulative authority and the 41
42 inert objects of its aesthetics and knowledge. When others refuse to be othered, 42
43 the exhibitionary machinery of knowledge finally begins to stutter in the violent 43
44 circuits of a moribund narcissism. 44

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1 References 1
2 2
3 Berger, John and Jean Mohr. 2010. A Seventh Man. London: Verso. 3
4 Dimitrakaki, Angela. 2012. ‘Art, Globalisation and the Exhibition Form: What is 4
5 the Case, What is the Challenge?’ Third Text 26(3): 305–19. 5
6 Ferrara, Beatrice, ed. 2012. Cultural Memory, Migrating Modernities and Museum 6
7 Practices. Milan: Politecnico di Milano DPA. 7
8 Khanna, Ranjana. 2007. Algeria Cuts: Women and Representation, 1830 to the 8
9 Present. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 9
10 Macdonald, Sharon. 2007. Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in 10
11 Nuremberg and Beyond. London: Routledge 11
12 Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley, CA: University of California 12
13 Press. 13

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14 Rogoff, Irit. 2003. ‘From Criticism to Critique and Criticality’. Transversal, 14
15 January. Accessed 8 March 2013. http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/rogoff1/en. 15
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